If you find yourself with a glut of hay seeds and need more straw fast without having to thresh hay or oat sheaves it to get it, just break it down through the UI. Click on the stack of hay and hover over the button in the bottom left for breaking it down and it will show you how much hay you will get if you decide to go through with it. Or just press X when you have the hay selected. This is probably the biggest time saver I can think of.

If you leave a stump in the ground mushrooms might grow up to a density of 9 around it compared to just 6 next to a healthy tree.

If a tree has 6/6 mushrooms growing on it and you turn it into a stump the mushrooms become 9/9 immediately.

If you're not sure what an idea requires but you know the name of it you can search the ideas menu by clicking the drop down menu at the top right and clicking the name of the idea. This works even if the idea and its ingredients are listed with a lock in the central part of the ideas menu.

If you are regularly relying on the ! priority setting by clicking the priority number you are making villagers drop whatever they are doing to do the task immediately. Over reliance on that priority setting is an indicator that you might need to re-arrange your villagers' skill priorities.

If you want to tell what skill is related to a specific object you can click on the object and it will show the skill icon in the object's infobox. So for example, selecting the butcher block shows a bow and arrow so butchering dead animals requires the hunting skill. However is an outlier which is the cooking fire and stone fireplace which requires cooking skill to cook meals but use the repair skill to refuel with sticks. Another one that might not be obvious is that animal beds require farming to replace the bedding instead of repair. Or the timbery requiring lumbering instead of crafting.

You don't need to place non-flammable roofing above a cooking fire. Roofing only catches on fire if something like a stack of straw is burning near it.

Windows are sealed. So don't worry about losing heat through them.

Dirt roads might seem useless to make as at first glance its only a buff of 11%. But consider this. If you are surrounded by grass that grass will hamper movement down to 56% of the normal rate. It can get as low as 16% with a thistle patch. Clearing the grass and just having dirt will increase the move speed to 77% of its normal value. And, no, I don't know why dirt without grass isn't listed as 1.00 movement speed if you were planning on asking me that. The dirt road will prevent grass from coming back and will provide an 11% speed bonus. Allow me to explain it differently and say that is a jump from 56% > 111% just for placing dirt roads on a tile with grass and 77% to 111% for placing dirt roads on a tile with just dirt. The only downside is that they need to first carry over a sickle to clear the grass then head back and grab a hoe to make the dirt path. Unless you happen to have enough free workers to have 1 clear the grass with a sickle and another 1 following with a hoe making the dirt path.

Winter leaves your roads covered in snow which negates any speed buff they provide. You can offset this by building roofing over the road however it will then start to accumulate dirt and mud as it no longer has the rain to wash away dirt. I believe dirt and mud only affect the road's environment score and don't have an impact on the speed bonus. The main upside to having roads though is that they prevent grass and other movement impairing plants from growing there. Grass in the winter slows you down from 63% down to 48%. Even when it says 0/10 as I don't believe that's keeping track of the length of the grass but is instead tracking how much of the resource you can extract from that tile. Thistle also slows down your villagers down to 15% during winter despite being at 0/5. Thistle only slows you down to 16% during warmer months.

If you need to find a specific farm animal simply click on the hand left of where all your villagers are on the UI at the bottom left. It will then show all your farm animals.

100% fish bodies of water can withstand 10 eels and 2 fish being fished out of them per day before they go back to 100% by the next day. If you try getting 15 eels the lake will only replenish to 95% by the next morning.

If you have only 2 fish and the smoker claims to require 10 fish to be smoked, keep in mind that the villagers will throw as little as 2 fish and 1 branch in the smoker.

If you want to see how much reputation you are gaining or losing before a guest, worker or merchant leaves the area, simply look at the left information box when you have them selected. It will list a satisfaction bar above their mood.

If you double click an item it selects everything on screen. If you shift click an item it selects everything of that type on the whole map. If you ctrl click you add an item to the current selection.

If you're having a hard time finding something like a stone pick, remember that there is an inventory menu located at the bottom.

The best way to make money is cut stones and smoked meats.

Annoyed by alert pop ups on the right side of the UI? You can disable alert pop ups in the inventory menu. For example, click inventory, click ingredients and then click branches. The checkbox at the bottom of the branches infobox on the left will say "show alerts". Uncheck it and you're good to go.

If you're going to send your resource gatherer to mine for iron, try to have them mine out multiples of 5 tiles. If you only do 2 tiles the miner will only return with 20 iron ore and the bloomery requires 25 iron ore to operate. If you mine 5 tiles the miner should return with 25 iron ore (provided they aren't rushing home to use the bathroom) and the next person who gets tasked with hauling back the other iron ore can also haul 25. Of course, exceptions to this rule can be provided if the iron ore deposit only has 2 tiles left and you have just the right amount of extra iron from the bogs.

If you want an ingredient stockpile to stop requiring you to keep disabling newly discovered ingredients from it, click the toggle all off option that has an X, then enable just the ingredients you want hauled to it.

Being in the rain without a cloak causes -500 max warmth and -100 mood max. Being in a blizzard without a cloak causes -2000 max warmth and -200 mood max.

Being cold around 3500 warmth causes -2/s food, -500 mood max, and -1000 work max. Freezing at around 1500 warmth causes -3/s food, -1/s health, -1000 mood max, -2000 work max. Reaching 0 warmth causes the hypothermia debuff which causes -5/s food, -3/s health, -2000 warmth max and -3000 work max and says that it can be deadly.

Set the world settings to +1 forest, +1 grassland and +1 wildlife.

If you want to use a map seed and follow along I am using 151818161. It features a spawn point surrounded by grass, a nearby 100% fish lake and trees in the area. I used this map during my previous guide so I decided to use it again despite the dev adding in bogs for easy iron as well as heather (.43 movement speed) and thistle (.16 movement speed) which slow your villagers down even more than regular grass (.56 movement speed) and are probably considered grasses for the grassland map modifier. The 3 mountain iron deposits are located to the north east (upper right).

Here is a screenshot of the area that I used for this guide.

If you decide to do 151818161 with +1 peat bog, +1 forest, +1 wildlife here's what the map will look like. The mountain iron deposits are in the south east (bottom right) portion of the map and have a path towards them without having to cut down grasses, heather or thistle. And the bog to the north west (upper left) has plenty of bog iron that you can pick up with the gather stone command. All of the berries other than the spawn point ones are located to the south (down) or to the west (left). Whereas the map I used for the guide seems to have more berry bushes nearby even though they are still deep in the grass. But I just took a glance at the berry situation. I'm not quite sure whether its the same amount or less berries than the map I used.

Now, as for the orphans, don't be afraid to re-roll specific orphans for this scenario. I consider it better to have good traits and work preferences versus being able to complete a single trade or start the challenge with an extra animal. But don't go and re-roll until you're completely broke. Sometimes its just better to re-roll all the characters at no cost click the orphans button. This will reset the character reroll cost.

In terms of skill spread you don't want 3 villagers that all hate crafting, building or hauling. Hating hauling is the worst job of them all to hate because if you disable it they are likely to, for example, leave iron ore behind instead of taking it back with them on their way back leaving someone else to do travel over to the iron ore then haul it back instead of 1 hauling job by the miner on the way back and 1 job that requires them to travel to the iron ore and haul it back. You might be able to get away with hating hauling on the chef since most hauling jobs after something is done crafting at the base usually involves hauling it about 5 feet to an ingredient stockpile. But leaving food lying around until someone else is not busy enough to pick up the slack would probably prove annoying. But, since you can re-roll so often here, you might as well have a group that closely matches what I have. The repair job is used for things like tending fires so don't roll a village full of orphans who hate repairing.

I recommend having 1 chef, 1 resource gatherer and 1 craftsman. The chef should have cooking, repair, crafting, building or hauling proficiency or enjoyment as these are all skills that keep the chef close to the village. I prefer to have slow metabolism on the chef as the decrease to movement speed isn't as noticeable when they're glued to a campfire or crafting area and aren't traversing through grass as much. The resource gatherer will be off gathering materials so they should have mining, harvesting (which will affect gathering straw), lumbering, hunting and building proficiency or enjoyment. If you think fast metabolism is a good idea on them for the speed boost you should probably take into consideration that this scenario already has 3 babies not contributing to food production. The craftsman should have gathering, crafting, clothesmaking, and building proficiency or enjoyment. Slow metabolism is an alright choice for the craftsman as well. Heavy sleeper is an alright choice for whoever isn't stuck doing doctor/baby care work. Heavy sleeper and tireless together is a nice combination if you need someone to wake up and overwork during the night every so often.

Slow metabolism: -2/s hunger gain and -10% movement speed
Fast metabolism: +2/s hunger gain, +1000 work max and +10% movement speed

Heavy sleeper: Ignores the -2000 mood and -4/s sleep debuff that lasts for 4 seconds when someone makes noise around them when they are asleep. That 4 seconds might not seem like much but when 3 babies are waking up during the night and requiring attention it adds up.
Tireless: +2/s sleep while asleep and while awake. The base sleep rate is +21/s. A sleep zone provides +5/s, a sleeping mat +8/s and a straw bed provides +10/s. Being awake drains -7/s sleep. A private room provides +5/s sleep.
Hard worker: +1000 work max.
Optimist: +1000 mood max.
Jolly: +1/s fun.
Healthy: -50% chance of getting sick.

Afraid of the dark: -1500 mood and -1/s sleep modifier while in the dark. Only in effect when the villagers should be asleep.
Pessimist: -1000 mood max.
Weary: -2/s sleep.
Gloomy: -1/s fun.
Lazy: -1000 work max.
Sickly: +100% sickness chance.

Mood: This affects how fast they gain experience, the work stat and movement speed. Although its not listed as increasing movement speed in the menu. I tested this out by making two villagers race each other and the one with the higher mood stat kept winning despite having slow metabolism which should have made them 10% slower.
Work: This affects work speed.
Age: Babies, juveniles and adults have their age stat bar fill up. Seniors have their age stat slowly start to empty. Probably to indicate that they're going to die when the bar gets emptied.
Health: This determines how high your fulfillment stats can get. So your food, water, sleep, warmth, cleanliness and bathroom stats are affected by it.
Food: How hungry they are.
Water: How thirsty they are.
Sleep: How sleepy they are.
Warmth: How warm or cold they are.
Cleanliness: How clean they are.
Bathroom: Whether they need to use the bathroom.
Social: How much they have gone without talking to someone.
Fun: How long they've gone without playing an instrument.
Environment: How beautiful their nearby environment is.

Here is the group of orphans I decided to do this challenge with. Richard is the resource gatherer, Greadach is the chef and Hendrie is the craftsman. As you can see I didn't do any character specfic re-rolls, only clan-wide re-rolls and started with 225 gold as I was happy with their combination of job spread and traits. Mainly their lack of negative traits and lack of being afraid of the dark on the juveniles. I ended up renaming them on the first day but you can rename them on this screen if you want to.

Remember to make a save right at the start if you are a save scummer like me that would like to retry a scenario with the same group rather than spending time on the character creator to get a similar group. I also made saves each morning in case I messed up writing the guide somewhere.

Now that that's out of the way, lets talk skill priorities. First, disable skills that cause unhappiness by clicking the skill then clicking the X that appears on the left or press g.

You will want to break down who will be doing long range tasks and who will be staying in the village. I play with 1 chef, 1 resource gatherer and 1 craftsman in the orphan scenario.

The chef can stay in the village and have high cooking, repair, crafting and building. These are all skills that will keep the chef close to the base. Keep hauling higher than harvesting, mining and hunting.

The resource gatherer will be off gathering materials, so they can have hunting, mining, harvesting (which will affect gathering straw), lumbering and building higher than their other skills. You will want hunting highest on the resource gatherer even before mining. This is because eel traps need to be collected in the morning in order to have enough food to get through the day. And, harvesting eel traps requires the hunting skill. And if you set something to be hunted chances are you either need the leather or need the meat sooner rather than later.

The craftsman can have gathering, crafting, clothesmaking, and building higher than the others and is more of a mixed bag in terms of travelling to gather berries and sticks or stones or staying in village to craft.

You can have all the skills I mentioned above in a slightly different order depending on whether they are proficient or gain happiness when doing those tasks. Just make sure mining is higher than harvesting and lumbering on your resource gatherer so that iron is dug out as soon as the resource gatherer is done with hunting tasks. The reason why I put gathering as the highest job priority on the craftsman is to prevent having to ! prioritise gathering berries when food is low. This also means that if you run low on sticks or stones your craftsman will immediately go gather them once you set the gathering task for them. The chef should be pretty straightforward. They cook. When they aren't cooking they're the first ones to take care of the babies or assist around the house as a backup builder or crafter.

Below is a screenshot of my skill assignments if the above explanation is too confusing to figure out and you want to copy what mine looks like. I ended up renaming the orphans to their job professions to make it easier to keep track of who is doing what jobs. If you want to re-organize the orphans in your game to have your craftsman, resource gatherer and chef in the same spots in the skill menu like I have them, you can drag villagers to re-arrange them at the bottom left when not in the skills menu.

I saved after setting up their skills.

Now to get to surviving. You will want to take account of which nearby bodies of water nearby have fish in them. In my game it is the lake to the south east (bottom right) from the spawn point. Hover over the water on the shorelines of them and the top left will show a stat like Fishing: 100/100%. Bodies of water with 100% fish can sustain 10 eels being fished out of them per day. You will discover eel traps by obtaining straw and sticks.

Gather 30 berries (each bush will have 5 berries near the spawn point), sticks and stones. Place a food stockpile. Place your drinking, washing and sleeping spots. If you have an ingredient stockpile made and have found a large stone, turn off large stones from being hauled to the ingredient stockpile. Make a work zone and auto supply 2 stone sickles. Once one sickle is made, clear grass near the shore and some of the reeds for a place to put your fire. Make one eel trap. Set the eel trap to catch 10 eels and then make it wait until tomorrow and set it to repeat the build queue. The repeat build queue button is to the left of the cog in the left menu. Build a thresher.

Make a cooking fire and make sure there is no grass or trees or reeds within the red radius. I placed mine on the shoreline. Place a flammable blocker stockpile around the cooking fire. Make the cooking fire auto supply 50 cooked eels. Disable raw eels from the food stockpile. Try to auto supply 1 stone hoe before bed. If need be, change the craftsman's work priority to overwork until it is done.

I tried placing pet zones near my beds. However, it would appear that chickens don't use pet zones. They use animal beds. And I'll be damned if I'm going to use up up to 40 straw just to get a small amount of food via eggs at this stage of the game. That's two whole straw walls or 4 pieces of straw roofing or almost 2 sleeping mats we're talking about. And animal beds require repairs after 8 uses. Repairs which require 5 straw. Since the 10 eels and berries seem to be capable of keeping the orphans alive until winter I just don't see the point during summer and early fall to having animal beds. Having eggs in the winter is much more useful though. Provided you can keep the foxes and wolves away from the chickens.

Starting tomorrow you should keep 25 berries stockpiled each day until fall, or have 2 days worth of food. It is also a good idea to check every so often when your eels are going to go bad and arrange to pick berries when they are going to do so so that they don't go hungry.

Here's the horrible organised living area and stockpiles on day 1. I even forgot to place a fire blocking stockpile near the cooking fire before they went to sleep. That 16 straw in the screenshot could have caught on fire.

Finish off the stone hoe if you didn't find the time yesterday or didn't change the craftsman's work mode. Make 2 poop holes spaced 2 squares apart and surround them with tilled soil. The poop holes will fertilise the surrounding soil as they get used. Lower the priority of the tilled soil to 0 so that it doesn't get tilled before you queue up threshing. I decided to test whether onions could grow during fall (because the growth seasons say spring and summer in-game) and only planted 2 tiles worth of onions at some point during summer which, in the end, which made me 12 onions. Not really worth it in my opinion so you may just want to pause tilling the soil until spring. Or till the ground during winter. There's not much to do in winter if you stockpiled enough food and warm clothing.

Here's a screenshot to show you the planned farm layout. I removed my ingredient stockpile to squeeze the farm into that spot because when I tried to put it closer to the cooking fire, there was a square that I couldn't turn into tilled soil.

I decided to put a food stockpile north (up) of the fire blocking stockpile near the cooking fire. I also put the ingredient stockpile east (right) of the thresher. Remember to turn off large stones from being hauled to the ingredient stockpile.

Auto supply a stone axe and auto supply 20 twine. Build a clothes zone while waiting for the stone axe. Once the axe is made and you chop down a tree, turn off logs from being hauled to the ingredient stockpile.

Here is the layout of the stockpiles from later in the day in my game. Your layout will depend on how much room you have to work with and its not too important to have the same stockpile layout. Just keep in mind that stations deposit their goods into stockpiles without the need for hauling if the stockpile is right next to the station. It works the same way for storage objects but those tend to require high level goods like iron ingots or nails or precious time to make.


Time to decide where to place the house. And by decide I mean think it over while gathering 200 out of 500 straw for the straw walls and straw roofing. If you need more straw without having to thresh it, you can break down hay using the UI. Just click the hay and press X or click the hay and press the break down button. The only reason you need to thresh hay to turn into straw is if you're low on hay seeds when it gets closer to winter. It is also time to decide whether to preserve nearby berry bushes or tear them down in the name of progress. I decided to preserve the berry bushes and make paths and stockpiles avoid them which left me with a much messier looking layout.

When considering where to place your house I recommend a spot where its slightly closer to any rabbits or foxes on the map while still close to your stockpile of goods and eel trap. If you need to see the rabbits easier turn on the temperature overlay at the top right. Basically you don't want to build your house in the southwest (bottom left) if all the rabbits are north (up) of your stockpile. Keep in mind that the water will freeze during the winter, eel traps won't be of any use, and foxes in this version of the game now eat rabbits and wolves also eat deer. However, you can still ice fish during the winter. It just requires a fishing spot. But, the problem with the fishing spot is if your fisherman has a low hunting skill, for example 0-1 hunting skill, it will translate into fishing until they almost have hypothermia. Well, I will elaborate that fishing until freezing cold depends on how much warm clothing that they are wearing, how far the fishing spot is from the warm house, how slow they move and as mentioned before how low their fishing skill is. The other thing to take into consideration for a fishing spot is the material requirements. It requires 5 nails to make a fishing spot in addition to 10 twine and 20 branches. So, If you are on a map with a smaller deposit of iron or a smaller bog you need to keep that nail requirement in mind when deciding whether to rely on it as a food supplement during winter. All in all I see hunting as the superior option even in the winter as hunting gives you hides which you can use to make your villagers warmer. Ice fishing is more like a nice thing to have.

And don't go thinking that making sleeping mats before making the house is a good idea like I did one run. Sure, the sleeping mats provide an extra 3 sleep and 1 health per second and also stop cleanliness from reducing while sleeping. But the main benefit to building the house before the sleeping mats is that you don't have to deal with productivity tanking throughout the day due to sleeping in the rain. You also won't have to deal with the sleeping outside debuff once the house is fully built. The sleeping outside debuff gives -500 mood max and -2 sleep.

I am going to place my house north west (upper left) of my stockpile as that is where the closest rabbit holes are located and there are less trees there too compared to directly north of the stockpile.

For the house size I recommend starting with a 5x7 design which will leave enough room inside for 6 sleeping zones and 3 tiles for other things. Other things like, one tile for a hide shelf (the storage one not the hunting one called a hide rack), one tile for a meat rack and one tile for a serving basket. Don't feel like you have to build all these extras right now. Just focus on the walls and roof. See the below screenshot for the bed layout and what the walls will look like when finished.


However, In order to speed up protection of your villagers from the rain I recommend the below design. I took two different screenshots in case you have issues seeing the roofing. One of which has the temperature overlay on. This minimal house design, while not likely to be built this way in real life, has the advantage of blocking rain on your orphans while requiring the least amount of straw. Now you just need to deal with clearing out all that grass and those trees. Keep in mind the minimal design won't stop the sleeping outside debuff because it doesn't have a full roof and walls.



You are going to need a lot of straw. 120 for the walls and 380 for the roof for a total of 500 straw. Again, I recommend using the UI to break down hay into straw so you don't end up with thousands of hay seeds, and save lots of time.

Just keep in mind, you should eventually keep 1000 hay seeds in order to feed the chickens during the winter, as well to grow some new patches of grass in the spring if you are not surrounded by grass like I am. If you need to stockpile less seeds to save time I only ended up using about 400 seeds all winter for chicken feed for 6 chickens. But, since hay seeds stack to 500 per square in a seed stockpile, you might as well aim for having 1000 hay seeds before winter hits. But don't go stockpiling all those seeds before you have an area to keep them dry from the rain, otherwise they will start rotting.

I unlocked rat traps. The description says that rat traps hug the wall but I decided to instead place them outside in front of the two doors. One rat trap per door will do for now.

Continue building the house. Once you unlock a dump stockpile, place a 6x1 dump stockpile 2 tiles north (up) from your farm. In the future you will place a 6x1 strip of tilled soil on top of and below the dump stockpile. The dump stockpile will slightly fertilise the surrounding soil when things rot within it.

Place a butcher block east (right) of your food stockpile. Also, if you have corpse stockpile unlocked, then create a corpse stockpile on the east (right) side of the butcher block and disallow human corpses. Then the corpses waiting to be butchered will be placed there right next to your butcher block and your hunter will butcher the corpses and drop the meat into the food stockpile.

So, see the diagram below for the layout. F being the food stockpile, B being the butcher block and C being the corpse stockpile.

FBC

I decided to queue up a flute and a simple bow to be made at the work zone. I also started clearing out the grass inside the house and clearing "paths" roughly in the four cardinal directions. Clearing paths is more important towards things like iron deposits or the bog as they are usually fairly far from the house. And by paths I mean just clearing the grass. Not making dirt roads. I did this to get straw as well as increase the range the orphans can walk away from the village before they get slowed down by grass. I didn't make dirt paths just yet because that would require they first drag over the stone sickle to clear the grass and then bring over a stone hoe to make a dirt path. Maybe once one of the babies grows up around Fall 2 I will make dirt paths.

Once the house is built focus on making sleeping mats for your villagers. And by house being "built" I mean the 6 straw walls I recommended building along with the roofing above the beds. They can slowly finish the rest of the house off as you get more straw. Oh and remember to remove those initial sleeping spots.

If you manage to finish the sleeping mats today, work on making a meat rack and a serving basket under the roofing.

If you didn't finish sleeping mats yesterday do that. Then work on making a meat rack and a serving basket under the roofing if you don't have those either. Keep working on making the house too.

Continue clearing paths from your house to your mountainous iron deposit and four cardinal directions while avoiding berry bushes and trees. Since you will be needing hay and eventually iron, make a dirt path from your house to the closest iron ore deposit on the map.

If you are not sure what path your villagers will take to get to an iron deposit from your house, you can order the digging of iron then click your miner to take note of where your villagers will path to get to the iron deposit. There is no need to make the dirt road all the way to the iron. Just making enough dirt road to get through the grass surrounding the housing area is good. However, if there is grass (or thistle) all the way to the iron you should build dirt roads leading up to it. I recommend this because the slower their movement speed the higher the chances they don't make it to a bathroom in time if you forget to micromanage the resource gatherer's iron ore runs.

I wrote in the tips section on why it is a good idea to get some dirt paths built. Give that a read if you feel like it. If you're falling behind on tasks you might just want to clear paths through the grass instead.

Your house should be finished today. Once the house is fully built auto supply a single stone pick. I created another flute to bring the number of flutes owned up to 2.

Once the pick is created set your resource gatherer to be the owner of it to prevent the other villagers from using it. You can do this by clicking on the villager clicking the lock and key icon at the bottom left and then clicking the stone pick. Or, click the stone pick, click the lock and key above the pick icon on the left menu and then click the resource gatherer.

Mine 5 iron deposits tiles wherever your mountainous iron is located. The iron veins on my map are located to the north east (upper right) and east (right). Since iron is generally located far away from the village you will want to keep an eye on your resource gatherer's location and the time. If its the evening you will want to make the miner take the rest of the day by changing their work mode so that they can get back into the village on time to attend to their needs. Otherwise they might have a blowout. Otherwise known as pooping their pants. Afterwards, you will have to revert their work mode back to normal once the evening is over. Its easy to forget about them though as there is a lot of tasks that require your attention throughout the day. Also, remember to forbid your villagers from hauling the stones at the iron deposit to prevent them from walking across the map to grab a handful of stones when they could just gather stones at home. The large stones are more valuable and worth crossing the map for. But not to just place them in the stock pile, so leave them unforbidden and check that your ingredient stockpiles don't have large stones allowed.

I wasted a bit of time this day trying to hunt deer. The group got alerted multiple times as soon as my inept resource gatherer tried getting close enough to. If you decide to send out your resource gatherer to hunt you should probably hunt foxes or rabbits until their skill improves. If the hunt succeeds you will want to make a stockpile for hides in the bedroom. You could also make a hide rack then make a hide shelf (if you have the 5 hides to unlock this tech) to dry and store the hides but that would require 20 twine total between the two of them as well as 1 pieces of roofing and moving the serving basket and its contents to the future chicken coop/mushroom drying room. So only do the hide rack and hide shelf option if you're ahead of what I have written down and understand where the serving basket in the bedroom needs to be moved to to fit the hide rack and hide shelf in the bedroom alongside of the meat rack. Otherwise, you could just mine for more iron ore.

Harvest grass and cut down any trees within 3 tiles south of the house with the intention of placing a cooking fire there in the future. Don't go moving your cooking fire until the cooking area extension to the house is finished and you have the area clear of flammable items using a flammable blocker.

Dig up some clay then build a charcoal kiln next to the ingredient stockpile. Disable clay in the main stockpile. The charcoal kiln doesn't shoot out sparks, so don't worry about causing a fire wherever you decide to place it. Auto supply 30 charcoal.

Build a kiln next to the ingredient stockpile once you've made some charcoal. The kiln also does not shoot out sparks. You may need more large stones after the rat traps used up 2, so queue up gathering some stones in addition to making sure you're digging up some iron as you have a chance while digging up iron to get a large stone. You may also need 100 clay for the kiln so dig up some more clay. Auto supply 50 clay bricks once it is built and dig up more clay for the bricks. You're going to need to dig up clay quite often so keep an eye on your clay count. You might even want to drag the clay tracker at the top all the way to the left so that you can notice when its low and it doesn't get lost among all the other resources being tracked.

Remember to keep an eye on the time of day at the top left while micromanaging your resource gatherer while they dig up some iron. When it reaches evening remember to set your resource gatherer to take time off.

Make a bloomery near the water once the bricks are made and put down a flammable blocker stockpile as the bloomery does shoot out sparks. Once you make an iron ingot with the bloomery, block iron ingots from your ingredient stockpiles as the orphans don't need to haul iron ingots 3 feet from the bloomery output to the ingredient stockpiles.

I had a food shortage. Probably had some eels go bad. So I had to pick some berries. On the topic of berries, clear a path to the closest berry patch.

Change the stone hoe auto supply from 1 to 2 because you're going to need it to make dirt roads and dig up clay.

Another reminder here that once 50 bricks are complete the villagers should get started on that bloomery if you didn't build it yesterday. Place it near the shore because it can generate sparks. Auto supply 30 iron ingots at the bloomery too.

Once the first batch of ingots come out make a timbery connected to the ingredient stockpile. This will let you turn logs into planks or sticks.

What I did was put a timbery with a ingredient stockpile to the right of the standing area that accepted only logs. So in the below diagram, T being the timbery station, S being the area the worker stands in and L being the log stockpile that is just an ingredient stockpile with only logs allowed in it. And what you do to make the log stockpile only accept logs and not require you to disable ingredients as they get discovered is click the "toggle all off" option on the stockpile then enable just the logs afterwards.

TT
SL

I recommend manually assigning sticks to be made instead of auto supplying so that your lumberer isn't interrupting whatever they are doing to head back and make a batch of 20 sticks once they are below the threshold. I make batches of 200 sticks as I needed them because gathering branches in batches of 6 off of trees feels a bit silly when you can just turn a log into 20 sticks. And trees drop 5 logs when turned into stumps. Gathering branches feels especially outdated once the timbery is obtained since gathering those branches generally requires walking through grass to get at the trees.

The one feature that I wish was in the game is a batch auto supply option where once it gets triggered, it makes, say, 200 branches in one go. This would bring the player from 300 to 500 branches.

If, in the winter, you find that you're having trouble keeping track of how many branches you have and keep running out, then you can switch to auto supply then as there is less stuff that needs to be built. Provided you have hunting higher up than the lumber skill on your resource gatherer there shouldn't be an issue with auto supplying branches during winter as your craftsman or someone else should pick up the slack while the resource gather is off hunting. And, yeah, the timbery requires lumbering and not crafting to make branches and planks.

I had a shortage of stone hoes due to me not auto supplying them which halted my iron production due to lack of clay. I made a note earlier in the guide for you to change the stone hoe to auto supply so you can avoid this issue I ran into.

You will need to make brick walls extending 3 tiles from the south side of your house sooner rather than later. So, once you are able to make brick walls get started on that house expansion. You need to create 200 bricks in order to discover brick walls so change the auto supply limit to 200 bricks at the kiln and remember to dig up more clay. You need 100 clay for 25 bricks and digging up clay provides you with 50 clay per tile dug. Making charcoal also requires clay. Remember to have enough sticks to keep the charcoal coming by using the timbery.

Keep in mind, the left section of the house expansion is going to shelter your cooking fire, so don't make this wall out of hay or wattle or anything else flammable. You can, however, put a hay roof over this section. The only way that a roof catches on fire is if something on the ground catches fire other than a fire source. Like a bundle of hay that is on fire would set the roof on fire. So don't worry about the cooking fire setting the roof on fire provided you remembered to put down a flammable blocker to stop things on the ground near the cooking fire from catching on fire.

I queued up another kiln and charcoal kiln to be made as I felt like I was getting further and further behind my previous guide.

While waiting for brick walls to get unlocked:
Make 2 sacks at the clothing zone. Don't bother auto queuing more as they will get used to hold fertiliser and you won't have the straw to spare. You probably only need to make 1 sack in order to unlock sack cloth clothing. If your new covered cooking fire area has anything flammable within the construction area make sure to put down a flammable blocker within range. I have a screenshot of the cooking area blueprint and completion on summer 10. You may also want to start working on clearing the grass from the future chicken coop/mushroom drying house expansion while waiting for the brick walls to unlock. So look ahead ahead to Fall 3 in the guide to see how large the chicken coop/mushroom drying house expansion is going to be and where it is located.

My task list was starting to get high at 50ish tasks so I decided to let the orphans work through the tasks I assigned.

It started raining before midnight. Remember you can't use the cooking fire if it is being rained on. That is why getting brick walls and that southern expansion built is so important before fall really shows how much rain can fall from the sky and the temperatures start to drop. Its also important to get to sack cloth cloaks to block the rain and snow as they're out and about. Being in the rain without a cloak causes -500 max warmth and -100 mood max. Being in a blizzard without a cloak causes -2000 max warmth and -200 mood max.

Remember to drop just about everything to get that indoor cooking fire area up and running once you get the brick walls technology. I got the cooking area completed on summer 10 in my playthrough for the guide shortly after I unlocked brick walls on summer 10.

This is day for berries to be able to be gathered at a worthwhile rate. They will slowly go from 5/5 to 0/5 as fall progresses which means travelling further and further to get less berries that quickly spoil.

Next on the list is the chicken coop/mushroom drying rack area. It will be a 4x7 wattle wall addition to the west (left) side of the bedroom to keep your chickens warm and dry during winter, dry your mushrooms and keep 2 serving baskets in. You will have the same sized interior as the bedroom once it is fully constructed. I queued up grass clearing in that area when I was still waiting on getting enough bricks to build the southern expansion. Your orphans might be stretched thin around this point so just make enough roofing to dry any potential mushrooms in the chicken coop/mushroom drying area instead of trying to build the whole roof and walls in one go. And by enough roofing I mean make a 1x7 roof that extends out the west (left) side of the house.

Sometime around mid-day I unlocked brick walls and made that cooking area my priority. Disable the extra kiln and lower the bricks being auto supplied to 50.

You will want to make a brick wall 3 squares long and 3 squares wide on the south west (bottom left) side of the house. The rest of the room's walls will be made out of wattle. The roof will be made of straw. Place a flammable blocker stockpile in the southwest (bottom left) corner of the room. Once the area is clear of flammable items and there is nothing cooking on the existing cooking fire, move the cooking fire to its new spot. Place a straw door to finish off the room and put a rat trap outside the doorway. Place a straw window outside the cooking area and bedroom doorway to let light in. Straw windows are flammable so make sure not to place any within range of the cooking fire. Once the straw window is constructed place a vent in the wall between the cooking area and the bedroom that is outside the flammable area as vents are also flammable. Queue up one jug to be made at the kiln. Once that jug is completed, disallow water jugs in your food stockpile to prevent them from hauling the water jug outside during the winter and freezing the water inside.

Here's a screenshot of the cooking fire room while blueprinted and after mostly being constructed.


Now that the cooking area is mostly finished (I still have to construct a vent and finish those blueprinted straw windows) time to get back to work on the chicken coop/mushroom drying area. Oh but before getting to work on the chicken coop, place a seed stockpile on the eastern (right) side of the indoor cooking fire room. This seed stockpile will get replaced with a water dipper eventually. Water dippers provide clean water but require water jugs to get refilled and only have 5 uses.

You will need to gather 50 mushrooms in order to make drying racks and you probably won't have unlocked that idea until day 2 or 3 of fall. Since it's still summer there likely won't be many mushrooms available for gathering. Maybe 6/6 mushroom spots here and there on the map. Although, you can turn 6/6 mushrooms on trees into 9/9 immediately by turning the tree into a stump. Once you do unlock the mushroom drying racks space out 3 of them along the wall that has the roofing. I recommend spacing them out so that you have room for 2 serving baskets in between the drying racks so that they dispense the mushrooms into the serving baskets once the mushrooms are dried. Remember, you should have a serving basket that can be moved from the bedroom into the chicken coop/mushroom drying room once the drying racks are unlocked and built.

Work on finishing off the chicken coop for the rest of the day. You might not get it done until Fall 2 though. Also, remember to build a critter door for the chickens to go through into the chicken coop. The critter door allows light to get in so no need to make a window into the chicken coop/mushroom drying area.

Feel free to read what I have in later days if you're ahead of me in terms of what needs to be built. I haven't been staying on top of telling you how often I send my resource gatherer to mine iron but I do know that I have 20 iron ingots in my inventory by evening of this day.

I sent my resource gatherer to mine 5 more iron deposits. I queued up another jug to be made which should bring the number of jugs to 2. I assigned some mushrooms to be picked.

I was still waiting for the orphans to build that chicken coop/mushroom drying house extension.

Its going to start raining almost every day soon. You may want to queue up some threshing of hay now as the thresher can't be used in the rain. That will slow down production of hay seeds needed to feed the chickens in winter.

I queued up 4 animal beds in the chicken coop. Clear the grass to the south west (bottom left) of the house in preparation for yet another expansion and to help with the straw reserves.

Build a second serving basket for the mushrooms and dried mushrooms. Move your one serving basket in the bedroom and create the second serving basket in between where you are going to build the 3 spaced out mushroom drying racks. That way the drying racks will empty straight into the serving baskets. See fall 3 for the positioning of the mushroom racks and serving baskets. Once your mushroom drying racks get built auto supply 1000 mushrooms to be dried.

Make 10 planks. Make a smithy. I put mine where my cooking fire by the shore used to be. Put down a flammable blocker stockpile around it as it produces sparks that can cause fire. Make 100 nails. Don't auto supply the nails.

See the below screenshot for the smithy placement if you're a visual learner. Don't pay any attention to the date in the top left. I realized later that I should include a screenshot of where I placed the smithy.

The oldest baby will grow up around mid-day to become a juvenile. I lucked out and they grew up to be jolly and a hard-worker. They still held onto their fear of the dark though. I lowered the craftsman's gathering skill so that the new juvenile can go gather instead. That way the craftsman can gobuild and craft things while I still have someone with gathering at max if a food shortage appears or I run out of stones. And, since the orphans haven't been threshing the hay, I put farming at second in the skills list for the new kid.

I put a screenshot of their skill orders below.

Here's the layout of the mushroom racks and serving baskets.

If that is too hard to see the below layout. M is for mushroom drying rack and S is for serving basket.

M
S
M
S
M

Set the cooking fire to be always lit.

Build a workbench in order to unlock toilets and to build stone tools faster. In order to unlock the work bench tech you need planks, nails and iron ingots. The biggest thing the workbench will require is 30 planks.

I decided to set my hunter to hunt a fox that I saw on the map. He succeeded at his hunt so I queued up a hide rack inside the bedroom after the fox was butchered in order to dry the hide. You will also want to set your cooking fire to auto supply 50 pluck on a stick once you succeed at hunting. Pluck was added to the game from when I wrote my previous guide and I assumed it was just for feeding to dogs and cats. So, I neglected to do cook pluck on a stick during my playthrough until around winter and I wasted a good amount of pluck by doing so. So, if you decide to go through with cooking pluck on a stick, you might have more food than what I ended up with at the expense of your chef not being able to assist with other tasks as often.

Place a 2x1 seed stockpile in the chicken coop/mushroom drying room. I decided to block oat seeds from this stockpile and left it for flax and hay seeds.

Build a water dipper in your cooking fire room on the eastern (right) side where the seed stockpile is. Once that workbench from yesterday gets made deconstruct the work zone that you were previously using to craft stone tools and twine. Queue up 2 chamber pots at the kiln. Place 3 mushroom drying racks in the chicken coop/mushroom rack room if you haven't already.

Get started on building an outhouse for your villagers. Make the walls out of wattle but don't bother putting a roof or doors on the outhouse just yet. Those require the ever necessary and important straw and we still have a third and final expansion to the house and clothes to think about.

Here is a screenshot of where I placed the outhouse walls.

The hides finished drying. However, the hide shelf that I wanted to make requires 5 hides and that fox only provided 3. Oh well.

Queue up 1 sack cloth shirt. Once that is done queue up 5 sack cloth tunics. And don't do what I did and make 6 sack cloth shirts thinking I was making tunics when I misread while following my old guide. I save scummed rather than deal with that mistake. I know its only a difference of 100 warmth. But I would also need to make a single sack cloth tunic in order to make sack cloth cloaks and if you made all shirts that means straw spent on 1 extra sack cloth tunic. On the other hand you can make them wear those shirts under their tunic so its not a complete waste if you made the same mistake. So, if you made the same mistake and want to recover from said mistake, you can make them wear those sack cloth shirts and later start making fur tunics to wear over them. You won't have enough straw to make both sack cloth shirts and sack cloth tunics and still be able to make all the other stuff that requires straw before winter hits. Like making sack cloth cloaks to keep them from getting wet or straw roofing for the bathing area.

Gather more mushrooms if you have forgotten to assign some to be gathered.

I noticed that the chickens were staying in their chicken coop for a long time. Then I noticed that they were keeping their eggs warm, which is good. I also noticed that the health of my craftsman and new worker is roughly at half. Health determines what the maximum value of most stats can be so an unhealthy villager can't accomplish as much as a healthy one. They can't fill their hunger meter as full as a healthy person for example. Health slowly goes up as they sleep and are well fed. But, when I went to look at what health the babies start at in the orphan scenario, they apparently start at 25% health. So, with that in mind, 50% health is a big improvement.

I queued up one water trough for the chickens after the water dipper was constructed. I assigned the area surrounding the outhouse walls to be cleared of grass. I queued up a vacancy sign to be built but all the rat traps used up my large stones. Once the vacancy sign gets built switch the sign to say there is no vacancy.

I managed to hunt another fox before the end of the day. Queue up a hide shelf to be built in the bedroom.

I had 6 days worth of food at this point and 162 dried mushrooms. This is a pretty significant difference from when I had 9 days of food in my first guide attempt.

Gather some mushrooms if you've been forgetting to gather them. Remember that 9/9 mushroom trick.

Queue up 6 sack cloth bottoms. It was raining for me so I deconstructed some hay into straw instead of threshing. Queue up 100 more nails to be made. They will get around to making the nails once the rain stops. I had 18 iron ingots prior to them working on the nails this day. Construct a trading post sign if your vacancy sign has been built. If the vacancy sign hasn't been built then gather some stones and hope for large stones to appear because the vacancy sign needs 3 large stones and so does the trading sign. Remember to switch the vacancy sign to say there is no vacancy on the sign once its built.

Construct 2 more animal beds in the chicken coop for a total of 6. Construct 2 toilets in the outhouses.

Queue up 1 sack cloth hat. Once that gets made queue up 6 sack cloth cloaks. These cloaks will block the rain and snow which is a huge improvement to warmth and morale. Unfortunately they require 50 straw each. Keep in mind that grass provides 10 hay per tile when the grass is at 10/10 while reeds provide 20 straw per tile. Keep in mind you still need straw to roof the south west expansion. You should slowly start building that expansion now. See fall 6 for a screenshot of the expansion. Oh and you also need to stockpile hay and straw for the winter for the chicken bedding. Chicken bedding requires straw to replace as the chickens use it. Keep hay around in case your future grain trough run out of food and the chickens need something to munch on while waiting for it to get refilled.

Also just letting you know that you need to stockpile straw now for winter. So don't use it all up crafting frivolous things like straw beds until spring rolls around. Back in my day, we slept on the ground in a sleep zone and endured -5 cleanliness per second.

I had 7 days of food with 207 dried mushrooms.

Here's what the south west (lower left) expansion's walls should look like. A 2 tile wide brick wall and the rest being wattle walls. If you want to see it further along in construction see Fall 7. This is going to be the bathing room/second cooking fire room. The second cooking fire's main purpose is redundancy. If you only have one cooking fire it might go out during the night. If you have two, chances are one has enough fuel to last the night. Remember to move any rat traps that are in the way of the expansion and put down a flammable blocker.

I had a trader show up. The goal with traders is to buy cheap things you need like hay, straw, flax, berries and iron ore. I recommend selling smoked meat once you have a smoker if you are doing good on food. I decided to buy 50 berries for 5 gold. I sold a male chick for 18 gold. I had 238 gold left over.

I queued up 5 trees to be cut down and left the stumps in the ground to try and promote 9/9 mushroom spots to grow near the house. If you have any 6/6 mushrooms growing on trees you can cut them down and leave the stump and the mushrooms will become 9/9. Queue up 2 more chamber pots to be made so that you have 4. I queued up 1 compost to be made on the western (left) side of the outhouse. I followed that up by building a gong place next to it.

5 orphans should be clothed in tunics with 1 with just a shirt, 6 sack cloth bottoms, 1 with a sack cloth hat and 6 sack cloth cloaks. If they aren't they should equip the clothes on the ground as the day goes on and the weather gets colder. Start making fur hats as you get the hides. I had 6 dry hides that I turned into 3 fur hats. I queued up 2 more chamber pots to be made so that I had 6.

I am pleasantly surprised that my 2 onion patches grew during the fall to become 6/6. I wasn't expecting them to grow so much. Especially considering the growth seasons are spring and summer according to the in-game information. So, I forgot to write down when I planted them. Probably shortly after I tilled the soil in spring.

I queued up some straw roofing to be built over the bathing/cooking fire area now that the sack cloth clothes are out of the way. Well, out of the way until you have enough straw to make sack cloth shirts.

Your oldest orphan will become an adult this day. In my game this was good ol "Resource Gatherer" who gained the traits fast metabolism and tireless.

I have 7 days of food consisting mostly of 280 dried mushrooms. I discovered my onions had been harvested this day. I think the game auto designates crops to be harvested once they reach 6/6 or in the case of oats 15/15 and flax 10/10.

Build a second cooking fire in that south west expansion. Make sure the walls are made out of brick before placing that cooking fire and remember to place the flammable blocker stockpile. When it gets built set it to be disabled with either V or clicking the menu option to disable it. You don't want two cooking fires going at once until its winter. Make 1 vent from the bathing area to the chicken coop and 1 vent from the chicken coop to the bedroom. Build a grain trough for your chickens. Once it gets built, disallow flax seeds and oat seeds from being put in the grain trough.

Gather more mushrooms. Consider picking the smaller patches in the mushroom patches near your home as it is getting late in the season.

I sent my resource gatherer to attempt to take down a lone deer. It took 3 hits before going down. My reward though was 12 hides and 50 meat. I queued up 2 more fur hats to be made to bring the total up to 5 fur hats. And I only made 5 fur hats because there is still that 1 sack cloth hat to keep them warm. After that I queued up 2 fur tunics to be made. Make a manure basket so your villagers can pick up the chicken poop.

A trader showed up. I bought 6 eggs off of her for 6 gold.

Need more hay and straw? Who am I kidding? Of course you do, clear a large patch of hay near the ingredient stockpile. Don't bother clearing grass near the chicken coop. The chickens will be keeping the grass there really short as they eat until winter rolls around.

Make a meat smoker and a bathtub in the southwest (bottom left) room. Once the bathtub gets made, let them fill it with water then disable the use of the bathtub. The bathtub isn't necessary for surviving the winter but I dislike letting my villagers run around with 0 cleanliness all winter. It probably affects their likelihood of getting sick. Once the meat smoker is made auto supply 200 smoked meat.

See the below screenshot for the layout of the bathtub, smoker and cooking fire.

Winter Checklist:
Make sure both south (bottom) rooms have windows. Don't place straw windows within the cooking fire's radius as they are flammable. Queue up 200 sticks to be made at the timbery. Your goal is 500 sticks for winter, 1000 hay seeds (although you'll only need about 400 for the chickens), 10 days of food and a silly amount of hay and straw. In my previous guide I had 334 hay and 249 straw by the end of fall. Change the roof visibility at the top right of the UI to check that your house is covered in straw roof. Double check that your vents are placed properly. You don't want the orphans to freeze at night because all the heat is trapped in the small rooms the cooking fires are in.

I had 11 days of food with 427 dried mushrooms. It was raining so I couldn't thresh more hay seeds. I'm only at 139 hay seeds and 199 hay. I noticed I was having issues with my farmer collecting chicken poop for the compost instead of threshing. So I changed the compost priority from 8 down to 5 and increased the thresher up to 8. They filled up more chamber pots so I queued up 2 more to be produced. A trader showed up. I sold him one fully grown rooster as I had a baby rooster and having fertilised eggs during winter wasn't a big priority for me. This left me with 282 gold.

I queued up 2 more jugs to be produced as having only 2 jugs doesn't seem to be enough to fill the bathtub. I needed more hides and what do I see? A fox getting close to the hen house and the hens freaking out. I decided to finally put some doors and a roof on the outhouses. I also put 1 window on the west and east (left and right) sides of the outhouse.

I queued up a fishing spot south east (bottom right) from my chopping block. Its tempting to place it closer, but theres things on the shore that can start fires like the smithy and the bloomery. See the below screenshot for the fishing spot's location. Don't set it to fish just yet. If you need more food you're better off hunting in order to get hides and meat instead of just fish.

I queued up 60 nails to be made as I had 8 iron ingots and only 20 nails after the fishing spot used 5 nails.

I had 12 days worth of food with 460 dried mushrooms, 305 hay, 83 straw and 289 hay seeds.

Two traders showed up. I bought 300 hay and 100 straw for 36 gold from one trader and sold him 2 fertilizer for 40 gold. This left me with 286 gold. The other trader was just selling animals and kail.

I queued up 2 sacks to be made at the clothes zone after I sold the 2 sacks of fertilizer and bought all that hay and straw. I also queued up 3 fur tunics as I had 13 hides ready to be made into clothing. The bathtub finally got filled up now that I have 4 jugs for water. I disabled the use of the bathtub by pressing V as I don't want them to spend time refilling it when the lake is still not frozen and still usable for bathing.

I disabled raw meat and pluck from being stored in the meat rack as I managed to kill an extra deer in addition to the one I was hunting. The reason why I disabled raw meat from the meat rack is that I didn't want cooked food potentially sitting outside in the rain as opposed to raw meat sitting in the rain. The raw meat might start rotting if it is raining though. The too wet modifier is -8 towards condition whereas too warm is only -5 towards condition.

The lake is about to drop down to 39% fishing max during the winter. It is also going to freeze over on winter 2 which means no more eels supplementing your food stockpile during that time.

Make a grain pallet in the chicken coop on top of one of the seed stockpile in there. Queue up 3 sacks for the grain pallet and set the priority of the grain pallet to ! to try and prevent the sacks from being used for fertiliser.

I slaughtered 2 chicks as I realised that I had 2 chickens too many.

Auto supply 1 simple peat spade. I tried digging up some bog iron to turn into iron but apparently I need 50 bog iron before I can create a bog iron crusher. You can get 1 bog iron from digging up peat and 10 bog iron by gathering stones on top of the bog. Build a bog iron crusher once you have enough bog iron and set it to auto supply 100 iron ore.

I have 17 days of food with 541 dried mushrooms. I'm not sure whether all that almost rotten raw meat (that I left out in the rain after killing two deer in one day and removing raw meat from my meat rack) counts towards the days of food. I set all the animal beds to be ! priority as they are starting to degrade and my chickens health is already at half on two of the juvenile chickens because I didn't realise I too many chickens for the number of beds I had constructed. I have 500 hay seeds in the chicken coop and 54 hay seeds out in the rain. I also have 280 hay and 413 straw. The outside temperature is 0.6C. The fishing maximum in the lakes will start dropping from 100% starting today down to 39%. Keep track of your sticks all winter. If you run out of sticks during the night and it starts becoming -34 with windchill outside the next day, it probably won't go well for you. You may just want to auto supply the sticks instead of keeping track of them now.

Here's a screenshot showing my inventory at the top of the screen on Fall 10's morning as well as the layout of the house and everything around it.

If you can find the time and its not raining queue up an iron pick to be made. This will be used later to make a stone quarry. You will also need another iron pick plus that stone quarry to make a masonry. The masonry will allow you to build a well. If you can't find the time right now to do all this then just leave it for winter. You can always just boil water at a cooking fire to make clean water instead of relying on the well. However, the reason why I like the well is because it requires a lot of water to maintain a bathtub at this step of the game and a well makes it easier on your family to have water in its liquid form nearby. It also makes it slightly easier to refill during spring, summer and fall as they just need to walk to the well instead of all the way to the lake. So, I am going to try building the stone quarry, masonry and well during the winter as there isn't much to do most days during the winter.

Forbid all the non-iron and non-large stone things at the mountain iron deposit location you've been mining at to prevent villagers from doing stuff like trekking across the map to pick up 5 stones to put into an ingredient stockpile. If there is a lot of things you need to select over there, you can double click an item and it selects everything of that type on screen. If you shift click an item it selects everything of that type on the whole map. If you ctrl click you can add an item to the current selection.

I have 3 sack cloth tunics lying on the ground after I made all those fur tunics. I could dismantle them for straw through the UI if I need more straw but they can stay there for now. I queued up 1 more fur tunic and 1 more fur hat as I am only at 5 for both of those pieces of clothing and I have the dry hide available.

If the grain pallet still doesn't have enough sacks then create more and double check that the grain pallet is set to ! priority.

A cat got tamed by Angus. An impressive feat for a baby. I made room for the cat by moving the mushroom racks outside in order to fit a cat bed. In order to make the cat bed you need to have constructed one clothing basket so go do that if you tamed a cat at this point as well. And do it quick because that cat will sleep in one of the chicken's beds while waiting for the cat bed. I queued up a pet food bowl and a water bowl for the cat afterwards.

I made an extra animal bed in case one of the chicken's beds wears out during the middle of the night. I placed that extra animal bed where the final remaining tile of the seed stockpile is once the grain pallet got built. I built a single wattle wall piece near the thresher so that I can cover the thresher with straw roofing and be able to thresh in the rain or snow.

You may have noticed that I haven't said to cook up any eggs yet. So, if you have eggs close to going bad feel free to cook up some cooked eggs at the cooking fire.

I queued up 5 sack cloth shirts to be created and dismantled some sack cloth tunics to make those shirts. Re-enable the bathtub. Disable water jugs from being put in the outside food stockpile if you didn't earlier in the guide.

Re-enable the secondary cooking fire. Queue up water jugs to be made from frozen water jugs on each cooking fire. About 2000 per fire should do for winter. You could also tear down the middle brick wall and place a third cooking fire if you really wanted to. Or place a tiled peat stove. I tore down the wall and I recommend expanding the flammable blocker stockpile before doing any other renovations. Like building a straw door from the cooking fireplace/bathroom to the bedroom. Because I forgot to put down that flammable blocker before putting in a door the straw from demolishing the wall ended up right next to the fireplace and I had to put ! priority on the straw and expand the ingredients stockpile to get the orphans to move it.

Here's what the house looks like now.

Set the grain trough and water trough to ! priority.

A wolf appeared near the house. I set it to be hunted. My hunter ended up killing one and chasing the rest of the pack off the map. Turns out when something is leaving the map you can't un-hunt it so my hunter followed them until they left the area. This all occurred at the end of the day so he had a longer walk back to the house than if I could have removed the hunt designation.

I queued up a fur cloak and let the task list settle a bit as they are letting the boiling water task get behind which is causing the bathtub and water dipper to be empty. I built a single wattle wall and some straw roof on the bloomery so it can be used during the rain and snow. Make sure not to place the wall within the red radius of the bloomery.

Auto supply about 500 bricks to be made in order to make brick paths. Just keep in mind the snow will prevent the speed boost aspect of brick pathways until spring comes around. You could also put down gravel flooring in the house but that will use up quite a bit of stone for a small boost to the environment score and movement speed and you will still need stone for stone tools. I also only recommend gravel flooring for this house because anything better will require either cleaning or straw floor mats outside the doors to keep the floor clean. I don't recommend straw floor mats at this point because they have 40 uses before they need to be repaired. Oh and before I forget to mention it, disallow bricks from being in your ingredient stockpiles.

The tailoring bench is your next real goal to get made and keep out of the rain. This is because you need it to make linen clothes to make summer easier. No big rush to make it though as you have all winter and spring to figure it out.

If you're struggling for food (or behind on what you need to get built) though don't bother doing the stuff I mention to build during winter like the tailoring bench, stone quarry, masonry, well, hide scraper, etc. All these things are nice to have but ultimately won't help you survive winter. Things like building a roof over the thresher and bloomery feel necessary if you plan on doing any threshing to get seeds or making iron ingots during winter due to how often it snows. But if you don't have any more things to thresh or iron ore to throw in the bloomery they aren't going to be useful.

If you have the planks and the iron ingots and its not snowing on your smithy, I recommend making one iron pick at the smithy in order to get started on the stone quarry to masonry to well idea path. Make a stone quarry on a piece of rocky ground near a mountain. The closest mountain is to the north west (upper left) on my map.

If you have that fishing spot built queue up 2 fish to be fished and then wait until next day and set it to repeat.

I had a trader show up. I bought 50 berries for 5 gold.

I had enough hide to make another fur cloak to reach 2 fur cloaks in total.

I queued up gathering some stones over in the bog to the south west (lower left) to get bog iron.

Guess what that masonry is going to require if you have forgotten? Another iron pick. Hopefully you've been harvesting bog iron as I have been because I am at 25 iron ingots. I queued up the masonry to be built and put a rock heap next to it. When the rock heap gets built disable bog iron from being stored on it as it should only store large rocks seeing how the masonry turns large rocks into stone blocks. I also built a clay bin near the kiln for the bricks.

Once you fish up a raw fish disallow them from being stored in the meat rack. Set your smoker to auto supply 20 smoked fish. Despite the recipe saying you need 10 raw fish and 5 sticks to make, it will let you smoke some fish up provided you have, at minimum, 2 raw fish and 1 stick.

I was running down to 91 sticks so I queued up 400 sticks to be made at the timbery. Feel free to auto supply sticks at the timbery if you keep forgetting to check how many you have.

Between the night of winter 3 and the morning of winter 4, both remaining babies will become juveniles. In my game, one is afraid of the dark and the other is afraid of the dark and a heavy sleeper. I made repair fairly high on the two new labourers so that they refill the bathtub, water dipper and re-fuel the cooking fires as those tasks don't take too long even with low repair skill. Their skills favoured being a lumberjack and a chef. I am not impressed with that. I would have liked to get at least one hunter. Oh well, at least they aren't both lazy and sickly.

Here's the updated skill listing.

The temperature outside during the night is -34C with windchill and a cozy 15C indoors. I realised there's one problem with my chicken coop setup during the blizzard in the night. If the grain trough is empty during the night the chickens will brave the blizzard to look for hay instead of pecking at the grain pallet. I decided to overwork my resource gatherer as he had the most sleep due to his tireless and heavy sleeper traits to ensure their grain trough got refilled.

The temperature after wind chill is -25C during the morning. The snow and clouds cleared up though and it reached -21C after wind chill. There isn't much to talk about other than how they are working on making those sticks so the fires don't go out and digging up clay and then going back inside to warm up.

I built a branch pile near the south western (lower left) exit of the house.

More wolves showed up. This time they are on the other side of where the deer were staying so I let them be.

2 more wolves showed up. I sent my hunter after one of them as I figured having 4 wolves on the map is a bit too much.

2 traders decided to show up. I bought 50 heather for 20 gold total and unlocked herb racks. I sold them 10 smoked meat for a total of 80 gold and was left with 341 gold. And the second trader? She was letting me sell her heather so I sold that 50 heather I just bought for 20 gold total and ended up with 361 gold. I decided to sell 10 more smoked meat for a total of 431 gold in my possession. I bought 200 stone for 20 gold. This proved to be an unnecessary purchase.

The well will require 20 cut stone. So get to work making some at the masonry.

I queued up 60 nails to be made. I queued up another fur cloak to be made as the wolf hide finished drying.

I managed to make 20 cut stone before the day finished so I queued up a well to be constructed.

I have 14 days worth of food remaining and 377 branches.

Two of my workers have the common cold so I set their work mode to time off. The common cold causes -5/s to sleep, -2/s to water, -1/s to food, -500 warmth max, -2/s cleanliness, -500 mood max and -1000 bathroom max. It is cured either with enough sleep then waiting for the timer to run out. I tried making a kitchen to make brose to see if eating it twice would remove the common cold debuff right away. I learned later on that brose is only made in a tiled peat stove.

A trader showed up. They were selling 200 oat sheaf and 100 straw. I bought that and was left with 365 gold. I set the oat sheaf to be threshed as the thresher. I sold him 1 bag of fertiliser and was brought to 385 gold.

I decided to build a second set of outhouses because one of the sick orphans set to time off had a blowout. I placed those outhouses south (down) of the house.

I queued up an iron hoe in preparation of queing up a lot of tilled soil and to make digging up clay easier. I also made an iron sickle so that clearing out the grass is quicker. Mainly because I have 25 iron ingots just sitting there.

I completed the well and placed it west (Ieft) of the house because its closest to the bathtub. The kitchen also got completed. So, I queued up 4 bowls to be made at the work bench... and then discovered that the recipe for brose changed since I last played. It now apparently requires a tiled peat stove, a clay bowl, oat grain, dry peat brick and a water jug. The tiled peat stove requires dry peat bricks, clay bricks, tile, clay and logs to be in your possession in order to unlock the tech. Also, the kitchen would have to be out of the snow to operate even if it was the right cooking station. I built a tiled peat stove. However, I discovered way off in spring that my tiled peat stove was using up dried peat even when not cooking anything and was not set to keep lit. According to people in the Steam forums that is intended behaviour for the stove as back the primary use for a stove was warmth. I only built it to try out whether brose cured the common cold as soon as the second brose was consumed. I didn't intend for it to use up dried peat during spring when I was trying to build a thatch roof in spring. So, if you don't want your dried peat to get used up disable the tiled peat stove. If you even build one that is. Brose requires 5 clay bowls, 25 oat grain, 5 dried peat bricks and 25 water in a jug. Auto supply the oat grain at the thresher if you happen to have any oat sheaf lying around. If you decide to start drying some peat bricks you will need to find someplace to dry it out of the snow. Even if it is outdoors in -11C weather the peat bricks will dry out as long as its not getting snowed or rained on.

The common cold debuff left my character once the duration wore out and they had enough sleep. I changed their work mode back to normal after the debuff went away.

I queued up 4 sacks at the clothes zone. I decided to build the tiled peat stove in between the two cooking fires because its not flammable. Remember to disable it once it is constructed.

Now that the well is completed you should create three flax rettings in the shoreline. They are listed under objects > clothing. They will require 1 large stone each.

A trader showed up. They were selling 75 iron ore. I dropped 75 gold on it all which brought me to 310 gold. Two of the chickens were seniors so I sold them for 33 gold each.

I queued up a tailoring bench. Don't go deconstructing the clothes zone just yet as the clothes zone can operate during the rain or snow whereas the tailoring bench can't.

I designated some brick roads to be built around the farm.

Another wolf in the area. I set my hunter upon them.

A trader showed up. I bought some ash and dropped to 366 gold. I didn't need to buy the ash really. I think I was sitting on 200 ash. I like to hoard stuff in games though.

I decided to make a hide scraper because that tech unlocked for me after I built the tailoring bench and I had some planks, branches and nails on hand to build it. Just keep in mind this line of technology requires a bark wash which won't work in the rain or in the cold. I'm just building this stuff now to lessen how much I need to build during the warmer seasons where things like crop maintenance is going to use up time.

I queued up 60 nails to be made. I queued up another flute at the work bench. I queued up another fur cloak to get made.

Chef will become an adult during the night between winter 8 and the morning of winter 9. She became tireless in my game.

Winter is almost over and I still have 12 days of food.

I queued up another fur cloak. I don't think I've mentioned that I keep getting dead rabbits that keep getting butchered by the villagers during winter. I think the cat is responsible for this. It has proven to be a nice supplier of hides and meat.

I assigned about 10 tiles of bog to be dug up. I don't really need the peat or the bog iron at the moment but like I've mentioned before there isn't much to do during winter.

I expanded my tilled soil to stretch the length of the dump stockpile that I have. See the below screenshots. The second screenshot is to show you how fertilised the soil is around those poop holes and dump stockpile.

I noticed that my rooster was missing after a new rooster was born. A fox must have eaten it while I wasn't paying attention.

The lake will unfreeze and the flax rettings will start producing cured flax stems once your villagers drag flax over to it. It should also start raining and clearing off the snow on the pathways meaning those brick paths will finally start increasing movement speed.

I queued up fur cloak number 6.

I made a single wattle wall and straw roofing above the tailoring bench.

The orphans ran out of things to do and were idling in the house so I ordered more brick roads to be made.

Clear out the water jugs from the cooking fires. Set cooked meat and pluck on a stick to auto supply 50 of them.

I ordered them to plant some flax around the poop holes on the farm. I also ordered some reeds to be planted in the shoreline. Since the water is now liquid again and eels are back on the menu and I have 12 days worth of food, I disabled the fishing spot to prevent any hunters from spending their time fishing. I later re-enabled it during Spring 10 as my food was slightly going down so its up to you whether you want to keep it enabled. I ordered 5 pieces of mountainous iron deposit to get dug out as I only have 3 iron ingots. All that brings me to 85 tasks in queue.

You won't unlock the flax dressing station until you have made 200 cured flax stems with the flax rettings. So, in the meantime build a 6x6 area to keep stockpiles and stations out of the rain. I made the corners wattle walls, the outer edge of roofing is stone roofing and the inner portion of the roof is thatch. The reason why I chose all these materials is that I can always make more sticks, the stone roofing doesn't require either nails or straw and the middle portion of thatch requires less straw compared to straw roofing while still having a roof span of 3. See the below screenshots if you're more of a visual learner.



Place a 1x4 ingredient stockpile under the southern (bottom) edge of the 6x6 area to dry out wet peat bricks in order to finish the thatch roof if you didn't build a spot to dry them during the winter.

And that brings me to 114 things in the task queue. They managed to clear out that task list before the end of the day. I guess I underestimated how much they could get done without babies to take care of.

A trader came by. I bought 1 stack of heather, 1 stack of hay and 2 stacks of flax sheaf. This brought me down to 296 gold. I sold 400 bark for 30 gold which brought me up to 326 gold.

Now that I have enough heather to plant I ordered 6 tiles of heather to be planted and lowered the priority to 0. You can use heather in the current version to make heather wreaths to put on the walls for 30 environment score. If you still have flax sitting around, or bought some recently, remember to thresh it at the thresher in order to throw it on the flax retting. You might even want to set the thresher to auto supply 200 flax stems.

The other trader arrived and was selling raw eels, eggs and boars. They also weren't buying anything I wanted to get rid of so I sent them away.

I made the top 6 tiles of the farm oats. Make sure to have the thresher auto supply oat grain. You might as well auto supply everything at the thresher.

Fire up the second kiln. If you haven't built a second one then do so. In the morning replace one sleeping mat with a straw bed. Make sure you have all the materials to do so before undertaking building the straw bed though. It requires 8 planks, 50 straw, 10 twine and 8 nails.

I recommend making a room that can fit a double straw bed, 2 water dippers, a bathtub and a cooking fire in the corner. It will also need room for a bed for a baby if one gets born. So, I recommend building the room to be 8x6. I recommend making the floor out of fancy tiles. I also recommend making the window a stone window. The roof can be made out of thatch.

Here's my layout.

I had the flax dressing tech get unlocked so I built the flax dressing station under that 6x6 covered area I said to build earlier. I queued up a 3x2 and 4x2 area to get tilled in order to grow oats. I also ordered 100 nails to get created as I'm down to 52 nails and have 23 iron ingots and those beds, water dippers and bathtub require nails. As does that flax dressing station.

Build a job board in order to get workers to hire. I only recommend hiring someone once that fancy room gets built as it will make the worker's satisfaction skyrocket while they are in it. The goal being to find a marriage candidate for one of the villagers. They will only accept once their satisfaction is at 100%.

A trader showed up and was selling 100 hay, 100 flax sheaf and 200 straw. I bought all that for 47 gold. I sold them 10 smoked meat. I ended up with 319 gold afterwards.

The rats are getting out of hand so I built an extra rat trap on each side of the entrances to supplement the one in front of the door.

Two traders came by. I bought 25 dried peat and 50 berries. From the other trader I bought 25 more dried peat and sold them 5 smoked meat. One of the chickens I had was a senior so I sold it for 33 gold.

Once the flax dressing station gets built queue up 25 flax fibres to get made. Set it to ! priority so that you can disallow it and the other clothing related ingredients from going to your ingredient stockpiles outside the 6x6 linen clothing covered area. Build a spinning wheel in the 6x6 linen clothing covered area next to the flax dressing station as soon as the tech gets unlocked. Set the spinning wheel to ! priority. After the spinning wheel gets made queue up a linen hank to get made from flax fibres. Once the linen hank gets made, queue up a loom. The loom takes up 3x2 worth of space and you should place it in the 6x6 linen clothing covered area. After you're able to make linen cloth turn off the ! priority on all these stations under the 6x6 linen clothing covered area.

I had a system turn all the flax into linen cloths without having to micromanage it by also auto supplying the linen cloth. I discovered on Spring 6 that the problem with auto supplying linen cloth is that linen clothing requires both linen hanks and linen cloth. So, don't make the same mistake that I did.

Set the tailoring bench to priority 8, the loom to priority 7, the spinning wheel to priority 6 and leave the flax dressing at priority 5. Set your flax fibres and linen hanks to auto supply 1000 at the flax dressing and the spinninig wheel. Then manually make 30 linen cloth at the loom. Linen bottoms require 2 cloth per linen shirst require 2 per linen coifs require 2 per and I have 6 villagers so... 12 + 12 + 6 = 30. You will need more if you hire someone or have a baby. I haven't hired anyone yet or even by Spring 6 for that matter as the people that have shown up haven't impressed me.

Order oats to get planted in the 3x2 and 4x2 tilled soil plots that were tilled yesterday.

I bought 50 more dried peat bricks as my inventory of them was at 2. This brought me down to 319 gold.

Dig up more peat. Set the auto supply of the simple peat spade to 2.

I realised I have 40 iron ingots. My iron hoe broke so I built another. I also built an iron axe.

A fox started to wander near the house to get at the chickens. I set my hunter upon it and made it ! priority. The chef decided to take the bow and try their hand at hunting.

A trader showed up I bought 50 berries and made 4 berry bushes to get planted in a 2x2 square.

If you have your charcoal kilns with an ash bin and a coal bin either orthogonal or diagonal to the charcoal kilns they won't dump their contents on the ground and instead deposit the finished goods into their storage.

So build or move your charcoal kilns, ash bin and coal bin like the below screenshot near the branch pile.

As you can see despite the selected ash bin being located diagonally from the east (right) charcoal kiln the ash bin still receives the ash from from the charcoal kiln.

I moved my kilns over to where I put the charcoal kilns. I didn't have the room to improve upon the below design without moving just about all the stations within vision to make the coal bin diagonally next to the two kilns. What this set up does allow though, is for me to fit in a masonry place to store the bricks from the kilns.

Queue up some linen clothing to be made. Like linen bottoms. Next queue up some linen shirts and linen coifs once they get unlocked. Remember to keep threshing flax stems. Or set the thresher to auto supply 200 flax stems.

Queue up an iron peat spade and an iron pick.

Over the next couple of mornings disassemble 1 or 2 sleeping mats in the morning and replace them with straw beds. Make sure you have enough planks, straw, twine and nails to complete the project quickly in the morning.

Two traders showed up. I sold them 200 stones, 20 stone blocks, and 10 smoked meats and ended up with 474 gold. A worker showed up that hates hauling so I sent them away.

I spent most of the day making a brick path towards the east (right) where an iron mountain is located that I was mining. Also, making linen clothing.

A trader came by offering a female dog for 189 gold. I bought it and sold him 25 stone blocks. This left me with 410 gold. I set the dog to guard the livestock.

I've been slowly turning my hides into leather. The best thing to make out of leather would have to be the leather bottoms in preparation for winter as it will make them 250 warmer and gain 750 mood compared to sack cloth bottoms. I set about making an expansion to the southern house for the dog and livestock. It's going to have the same amount of space inside as the southern house.

3 traders showed up. The dog is now worth 300 gold to sell apparently. It must have been calculating its injury towards the price when they were selling it to me or something. Oh well, I'm keeping it. I bought 5 berries and sold 15 smoked meat and 50 bricks. This left me with 515 gold.

One of the labourers that showed up was asking for 50 gold per day. They had repair at level 8 and an aptitude of X4 towards it, dislikes lumbering and likes cooking. I hired her. I disabled her lumbering task and increased her cooking skill priority. I made her the owner of the double bed and the bathtub in that large private room that I built.

The skills list.

I placed a tiled peat stove in the worker's room for warmth as the cooking fire was resulting in people barging in and leaving blood on the ground from the meat they were cooking.

You might want to re-enable the fishing spot if you're running out of things to do and slightly going down in food supplies due to your fishing spot being disabled. Remember the 100% fish lake can support 10 eels and 2 fish being caught per day. You may want to set up a second fishing spot to support a larger population.

You will want to buy sheep which are called ewes and rams from traders once you have a labourer working for you and you're still going up in cash. The wool from the sheep can be used towards making wool clothing as well as for making plaid for your new members of the village. Setting up the production chain for wool is easy enough as you should already have most of the buildings made. Keep in mind wool clothing isn't quite as warm as fur clothing but they won't have a mood debuff from wearing it so they should move faster while wearing it.

The ideal clothing for winter is probably wool shirt for 500 warmth, wool tunic for 650 warmth, leather bottoms for 500 warmth and 250 mood, wool hat for 500 warmth and a wool cloak for 1200 warmth for a total of 3350 warmth and 250 mood. Whereas the maximum warmth setup would be wool shirt for 500 warmth, fur tunic 800 warmth and -300 mood, leather bottoms for 500 warmth and 250 mood, fur hat for 600 warmth and -150 mood, and a fur cloak for 1600 warmth and -400 mood. This would provide 4000 warmth and -600 mood and would probably be good for the hunter. As you can see the wool shirt is the first thing you should make enough of for all your villagers because its an upgrade from the sack cloth shirt in either the optimal equipment or maximum warmth equipment followed up with the tunic and cloak later on as nice to haves. And the leather bottoms are an upgrade from sack cloth bottoms, so get on top of that production chain as well.

The steps to making wool:
1. Have shears made out of iron at the smithy and a sheep ready to be sheared.
2. Shear the sheep.
3. Build the wool dressing station once it gets unlocked.
4. Make clean wool at the wool dressing station with 25 raw wool, 10 wood ash and 50 water.
5. Make wool hank at the spinning wheel.
6. Make wool cloth at the loom.
7. Make wool clothing or plaid at the tailoring bench.

Here's what my village looks like on Year 2 Spring 10. Summer shouldn't prove too difficult now that there is enough linen clothing for everyone. I hope this guide has helped you survive the winter as a bunch of orphans.