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Tips for Newbies

By RubyHummingbird

A point form list of tips that answer a new player's most commonly asked questions.

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Created by

RubyHummingbird
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Category: Gameplay Basics

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

13 Oct, 2023 @ 8:41pm

29 Sep, 2024 @ 11:53am

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49	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Important

Buildings

Resources

Prophesy - Omens, Events, and Dooms

Seasons

Pips

Comments

Important

Signposts expand build-able terrain.
Most memory unlocks add new features to your next run, not your current one. If you unlock fish, for instance, it will not add fish to your current map. Memory unlocks are a meta-progression, while the tech tree is for your current run.
At the start of a game, after placing your first research building, look at which techs you have available to unlock. Make a note of which resources they take as inputs--you might assume your heating will take wood as an input, but it turns out this run it takes hemp. If you don't notice this until you need the heating, you could end up in trouble.
-- Do you have wells (which use a water source) or mountain springs (which require a rock to place)?
--Do you have pools (which take water as an input) or fans (which have no input but require hemp to build)?

Buildings

Some buildings have the requirement 'path to dwelling.'

This means that there must be a nearby house and all tiles between and under the two buildings must have the matching path type. (This example shows a clearing path. The tiles do not need to be empty.)
Fancier buildings require cobblestone paths that lead to your town centre. Similar to the 'path to dwelling' these must have a path paved in cobblestone to be placed. Later buildings require brick pathways instead.
Higher-value paths also work for lower-value path requirements. For example, a building that requires 'path to dwelling' will work with cobblestone or brick paths as well.
Buildings that exploit 'one tile away' only affect directly adjacent tiles. Buildings that exploit 'two tiles away' affect both adjacent and diagonal tiles.

Resources

You can use a resource the same turn as it's produced.
Because you can use a resource the same turn it's produced, you can move workers around to prevent a shortfall immediately.
Example: If you have zero hemp, but you have a forager producing hemp this turn, you can use the hemp in any building that takes it as an input.
A segmented arrow on a building's production means that the production takes multiple turns. Example: The initial hunter's tent takes three turns to produce anything, while the upgrade does it in one turn.
You can milk sheep.
Rabbits can eat any vegetable, not just carrots.
If you have a chicken coop, but there are no wild chickens on your map, you can still lure a chicken. Same with rabbits, cows, or sheep. We can only assume these animals are captured outside the map or perhaps summoned from the void in an eldritch ritual.
If you hover over the fishing hut, a green outline on nearby tiles will show which fish it can reach.
Tilled soil gives a bonus to many (though not all crops), but you do not need to till soil to plant. This means you can research and plant crops before you unlock tilling.
You can till soil under trees to boost their production. (This works for any fully-grown fruit tree, even if it generated as part of the map.)
Tilled soil and fertile soil bonuses do not stack. There's no benefit to tilling fertile soil.
Corpses are a resource. A graveyard produces hope based on the number of buried bodies. An upgraded graveyard produces 2 x the number of bodies in hope, using a single gravekeeper worker. This takes zero inputs, so it's actually a cheap source of hope, assuming you have the bodies to use it.
You can see the remaining quantity of a berry bush, tree, or forest crop by hovering over them.

Prophesy - Omens, Events, and Dooms

One of the domains is stronger than the others every run, so focus your initial efforts in preparing to counter that domain.
You can 'store' hope/health/etc for future events. For example, you can produce hope even when there are no negative events looming. This gives you a bit of a buffer against your next fear event. (The counter will reset to zero at the end of the event, so you can only store for the next event, not any after that.)
There is no way to stop or influence omens, so you don't need to focus production in preventing them. Instead, focus on buildings that let you cure negative conditions related to the domain of the omen. (e.g. Sick for the Health domain)

Seasons

The season change always triggers a hot/cold countdown, even if you can't see it on the prophesy. Changing to fall flips to 'cold' events and changing to spring changes back to 'hot' events. For other domains, you may get lucky and not need counter them this season, but there will always be seasonal events.
Because of how seasonal events work, you'll need 'cooling' buildings for your first two seasons no matter which domain is dominant.
You will also need to create some 'heating' buildings before fall. Knowing this allows you to plan ahead before fall arrives.
Any snow on the ground will melt at the start of Summer.
Snow is rough. Every snowy tile will get a -1 penalty, so events that fill the whole map are tough to recover from. (On the plus side, snow is only created by random events or failing dooms.)
You can dig up snow using tools.
In winter, animals do not respawn on the map after they've been killed and most crops will not grow.
You can still forage in the winter.
Winter is shorter than the other seasons.

Pips

If you don't feed pips, they will get sick.
You can view a Pip summary screen by clicking the 'Pips Recap' in the top right corner of the screen.

Here you can view details about your pips like the task they are performing, their current job, or their ailments.

You can also remove their job, allowing you to train them to do something else.
To remove a Pip's assigned job, click the red X next to the pip's job title to remove it.
You can also shift-right-click to open a pip's summary directly.
Unlock buildings that allow you to cure negative conditions before you need them. For example: if you wait until your pip is sick to research a way to heal them, you may collect too much illness to prevent the next event.
If you have an injured/sick pip and you don't have the tech to heal them right now, you can remove their job and train another pip rather than waiting for them to recover.

34 Comments

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RubyHummingbird [author] 26 May @ 10:06pm

Hm, it sounds like the way threat is generated has changed since when I last played. At some point when life is less busy, I need to play again and update this.

Liwet 25 May @ 1:45pm

Adding on to this, the multiplier doesn't act on the increased power due to difficulty. So on hard difficulty, a threat level of 5 will generate 35 power per turn. 20 of that is the base and 15 is from difficulty. The 4x multiplier only acts on the 20.

So to get 100% for a normal 5-turn event, you would need 255 protection (35x5 + 20*4) barring any other additions to the power (like overpips, etc).

Liwet 9 May @ 11:37pm

In order to defeat an event, you not only need to match the Doom's danger level (to get a 50/50 chance of beating it), you also need to take 4 times the amount of danger the doom is making per turn and adding it to the 50/50 amount. For example, if the doom is generating 13 fear per turn for 5 turns, you'll need 65 hope to get a 50/50 chance of beating it. To get 100%, you need (13x4) 52 more hope on top the 65 (a total of 117) to get 100%. Any amount between 65 and 117 in this example will increase your chance from 50-100% in a strait forward way.

JinxLuckless 23 Apr @ 7:31pm

Oh, and mbomb007 said in the original thread, "It's not necessary for Pips to eat every turn. If you have some Pips on Hope generation to counteract the effects of Hungry Pips, you can last longer in the winter, getting by with whatever food you have available."

Which is a great tip. I thought they'd starve when I first played, but they don't, they just cause 2 Fear per Hungry Pip.

JinxLuckless 23 Apr @ 7:28pm

Thanks so much for this-- great guide!

In your original Steam thread, you talked about missing requirements for other researches, and how to tell what's missing, as well as to not bother researching things without researching their requirements. Really good tips, probably should be added here?

I did want to note an exception: if you don't currently have any Bourgeoise Pips it will show that you don't have the requirement-- in this one case, it's not something you have to research, it just means you need to make a Bourgeoise. You still need a house for them, though.

(I had a heck of a time my first runthrough, always trying to figure out how to 'unlock' Bourgeoise Pips. I first thought maybe I needed to research all the things they want, and when I'd done that and it still showed a missing requirement, I thought they were a Memory I needed to unlock. XD )

RubyHummingbird [author] 30 Sep, 2024 @ 4:36pm

If they were lost in an event, you mean? I think I've seen one come back from that in another event, but it's been a while since I've played.

bullet 30 Sep, 2024 @ 3:33pm

Is possible to regain lost pips? Or if they are lost they are kind of dead?

RubyHummingbird [author] 29 Sep, 2024 @ 11:52am

Ah, that's a good change. I'll update the guide.

30.06 DILF Hunter 29 Sep, 2024 @ 11:25am

I believe snow will automatically melt at the beginning of Summer, it just happened to me. Still there through the Spring, though.

Dainank 27 Jul, 2024 @ 12:24am

We can only assume these animals are captured outside the map or perhaps summoned from the void in an eldritch ritual.

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