In this guide you will see ways to improve your efforts at the start of a new game session. You should understand that like most games Aska is similar to, it is also very much its own style. As you start to play the game for the first few times. Expect to fall it battle, have villagers feel incompetent, find unexpected piles of resources, lose villagers for varying reasons. This game has many challenges and can seem difficult at the start. After some play-through and experience you can become more efficient. There are custom settings for you to make the game easier or more difficult. You can choose to remove some features. The reason why you should leave the mobs in the game is for resources. The mobs will currently drop valuable resources that you will be grateful for later on. For this guide i have started a new session under normal settings.

Further in I will discuss the methods I have developed for starting a new session. Ranging from what resources to pick up, to where to build. As well as methods and reason for placements of structures. Many experienced players have developed there own method of starting out. This should help those who are just starting and feel that the game is unplayable for them. Aska has a large learning curve game that can be really rewarding.

Please visit my guide on ai to help understand schedule and managing your structures.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3365666037

As you start you awaken on an island alone with nothing but a waterskin. The first thing you should do is pickup the 5 jotun blood provided for you. Make sure to check your controls and find the button mapped for the resource finder. This will be your most used button so i recommend mapping to an easy press.



As you start to move away from the ship wreck you'l come across a wisp or two. Blue ones are helpful hints as how to start. While Black ones are aggressive and will spawn along the coastline. At the start they can be very harmful. Avoid them till you gather two sticks and make a hammer. This is the most efficient way to deal with them at the beginning. They drop fiber and sticks.





If you check the hint for the first blue wisp it will give you the task to make a campfire. Pin the task and then go scout your surroundings. You'll want to look for flat land not to close to mob spawners. If you get luck you may be able to build near a cave. The best start spot is near the coastline. The reason is so you can manage the villagers better for coastal resources.

As your scouting around make sure to pickup flax. This is used make rope. This is a high demand item for the start. It makes your tools and structures. As your walking around craft yourself an ax and pick ax to start. Need not worry about any other tools just yet.

The image on the left is of a cave. There big rock faces in the side of high terrain. There easier to spot if you press the resource finder. On the map you'll see a small shadow near the cave entrance. This is a method of finding caves versus hilly terrain.


As you can see here there is a cave not to far from my landing zone, but it is near a wulfar den. For new players you'll find wulfars to be difficult. However after you play more you'll find them to be the best food source. So don't discount spawns like this. Yes the wulfars will attack the outpost you place here. So wait till you build up more.


So we've found a spot along the coast for a camp and farmland for later. As you can see the areas for these are void of respawnable resources. There are no spawners nearby and we have natural water sources withnin shot distances. The area is relatively flat and has no indestructible elements. You may find areas like this further inland, however for new players i strongly recommend sticking to the coast your first few runs. The image below shows how we are going to plan our village and future expansion. While your looking around take notes of terrain, indestructible objects, open areas. I've marked out the road that will lead to our first outpost.


Why are we building a camp first?
New players will attempt to build there village at the start. While this is viable. It will lead to many troubles later. The best way to start is to build small, close together and fast.

Why should we build on area with trees?
Areas with trees are usually flat, void of indestructible objects, have little respawn resources. These areas provide the best place to terraform for your village

Place your campfire relatively in the middle of the open area. After that follow the blue wisp to craft a full campfire. Once there lets open the campfire menu. You'll see the upgrades fire cover and barbecue. Make both of them on this campfire. The fire cover will allow it work during all weather. The barbecue will be the best starter food source. Instead of raw food they'll have cooked food. I front of your camp fire place the rain collector. Leave some space for walking. This will help provide water while you get your wells up.



Lets continue the wisp tutorial tasks. Shelters, the first place for your villagers to rest. These will help even into making your village. Think of the tic-tac-toe grid with your campfire in the middle. Now place your eye of odin in front of your rain collect with the eye facing away from it. This is a little trick i figured out. During leisure time the villagers will go to the eye of odin when there is no altar. So the place they sit is behind it, placing it this way the villagers will sit next to the fire.


So you are ready to call your first villager. It will take 10 mins for them to spawn. During this time it is best to explore and harvest jotun blood. These are rocks with shiny blue surfaces. You'll only be able to harvest shards at this point but there are plenty near coast areas. So gather up 5 more jotun blood then head back. Be sure while you are out to gather that flax. By now your villager should be spawned or close to it.


Now that your villager is here they will need some instructions. First open the settlement menu with tab. You will see your villager who is homeless and has the default schedule. In the image below you will see i chose the one with a nighttime affinity. So i will want to schedule him to work at night and sleep during the day. These kinds of perks are great for jobs you want done at night. Next lets assign him to the shelter we made.

Let's plot out our next step for our camp. We are going to need more villagers so they need shelter. Place 3 more shelters on the corners of your grid. Next setup your wood cutter behind your campfire. Your food gatherer and stone gatherer should be on the sides of your campfire between the shelters. With gathering resources you'll be doing it at the start till you can assign a villager to the task.


After you've built your wood cutter assign your first villager to work there. Now your next villager should be arriving place them onto your food gathers hut and set there schedule. Set the white list to no one. This way all your food is not eaten raw. Head out to place food gathering banners. Place them distances apart so they over lap a little. continue to gather more jotun blood so you can spawn another villager.


As you spawn villagers, continue to build your structures. Once you've finished you've completed this step of your camp. You should have workers at the woodcutter, food gatherer, stone cutter and a builder.

Why the grid method?
With the grid method you save space and provide passive protection. You find that smolkrs will come into your camp and eat your resources. While they made the torch for keeping them away. Torches don't work during rain. You villagers will turn them off during the day. The flame costs resin which is a resource best saved for another structure later one.

Tip for the wood cutter
Go into the wood cutter tasks menu. Turn off the firewood resource completely. I always do this to stop the wood cutter from creating a mass field of decaying resources.

Tip for the Food Gatherer
This structure will gather your fiber. The biggest problem will come from the gathering feathers and taking up your inventory space. Turn off feathers for the time being since you won't need arrows yet.

Your villagers are starting to complain about food. So you'll want to build two more shelters for extra hands. While the builder is doing this for you. Go to your Gatherer's hut and get the food they have. Like onions, garlic, if its summer carrots, lettuce will be there too. Now you can put these into your barbecue and place the final product in the storage. Your villagers will automatically pull and eat when they need to. Also make sure to place down some wells. Two at a time so you don't overwhelm your resource gathering.

Time to work on making tools and storage. Place the workshop in front of the eye of odin and two shelters on the sides of the eye so they don't interfere with the expansion of the workshop. Behind the wood cutter you'll place the warehouse. Not so close that the ware house can't be expanded later on. Once you've finished your workshop. Craft yourself a large pickax so you can break down those larger jotun blood stones. This will help you to bring in more villagers.



As your increasing you villager count and your builders are working. Now is the time to work on another food source. Fishing. Go and craft a rod and grab some berries for bait. Now make a stone knife for breaking down the bass. You can fish anywhere along the coast. This will yield bass for one fillet. Which you should turn into cooked fish. Don't spend too much time fishing. Winter is coming and were still getting our camp built.


New villager tip
They arrive with an ax, hammer and a hoe. If they are not a builder they don't need them its best to place these into the workshop. Those that need a new tool will take from them. Making it easier for you to not need to craft more tools than needed.

At this point you may or may not have seen a blood moon. These come periodically to spawn mobs to attack your village. It always happens during night. The amount of mobs and waves increases based on time survived and amount of villagers. In the beginning they'll be starter mobs. The zombies. These mobs are easy to handle they take time to charge up there attack and move slowly. The recommended method is to gather them into a small group. Hit a couple times and evade there attack. Hit again enough to stun them then finish the group off.

As you continue with the game there will be structures you can build to train warriors, archers and dogs. As these are more intermediate structures I will forego explaining them. As you continue constructing your camp, keep in mind that you'll be expanding into the area for your village.

After you've spawned 6 workers you should have a woodcutter, food gatherer, stone cutter, barbecue and 2 builders. Time to craft tier 2 tools for your workers so they can help you upgrade your camp. Which you should start with the wood cutter, then upgrade your stone cutter. Now upgrade your workshop to tier 2. Then build the Weaver upgrade. The reason for working to get to this fast is for the transforming bark to fiber. Instead of breaking it down this will give you the ability to craft 8 fiber for 5 bark. This will come in handy later on more, but it is helpful for short term gain early on too. After upgrading you workshop you should build a coal maker behind the warehouse.

Now were going to start a farm. Here we'll place a campfire, shelters, wells, farm structure, rain collector and a warehouse. Inside the farm warehouse storage you should place seed, raw food, water barrel, tool rack(only rakes), small item storage (spoiled food only). Once your farm is up and running it will take 2 villagers per plot to manage or for a full 3 plot 3 shifts with 2 villagers each. I recommend getting a full 3 plot so you can have 1 for farming fiber and the others can farm food.

When your finished building up your starter farm, move onto increasing your villager count. We'll make a couple cottages on the sides of our camp. Inside these cottages we'll add 2 more beds, 2 room separators, a table and two armor mannequins. This will allow fo you to bring in 8 more villagers to make your count 20. Now we'll assign 2 villagers to the warehouses, 1 to the woodcutter, 2 to the workshop, and keep 3 as builders. At this point add-on the tannery to your workshop.

With your camp complete set your workshop to produce linen plants, leather shoes, flimsy gloves, fur capes and linen hoods. Now your villagers will automatically equip with better clothes and stay warm longer during winter.

For this you'll need to gather hides and pelts. Now build a hunters hut near your farm. Inside your warehouse place a leather scrap storage, small item storage(set to only bones). Let your ai builders finish this themselves. Till then make yourself a two handed club and head to a wulfar den.

Take your time here and make sure to dodge. Wulfars will do a lunge attack making them vulnerable to a heavy attack causing them to get stunned. After they get back up, stop attacking and prepare to dodge. After they strike do some more attacks. Now they'll do a lunge again so repeat the process. Now that the wulfar is downed, use your knife. Also use your knife on the meat chunks, they'll give 4 meat each, this will help you provide better food for your camp. Once your full on resources head back and drop them into the workshop.

When the wulfar den is cleared of spawns, take the time to place a hunters flag. This will allow for you to automate collecting leathers and food. Your hunters can generally handle the wulfar den themselves.

Now your done with tier one tasks and ready for tier 2. The tasks are piling up and your spending more time managing the village. Let the ai you already have take the load. Set up work chains and ensure your villagers have enough food, water and altars to sit at. Make sure that your going out and finding jotun's blood. The large stone pickax will allow you to farm the larger stones. Remember you'll be doing the task at the start. Then bringing in villagers to take over those tasks. As you slowly clear the area for your village you'll be removing stumps and flattening the land for blueprints.

I want to express patience. Take some time to plan housing, workstations, warehouses and the roads connecting. Do you want to make a multi layer village on hilly terrain, or is your village on a flat area? Where will you place your defenses? Will you have walls with gate. How will your production chains connect? Will you upgrade to Longhouses or stick with cabins.

This is the point at which your village will take shape. Decide where you want the entrances to link with future outposts you will build. Take some time to explore further inland to find caves, boss zones and other obstacles. Think about how you'll connect the roads. If you want to remember where you want the roads, then use the patrol flag as markers for the road.

Setting up 5 blueprints at a time and pinning them to your screen. You can see how far your builders have gotten while your away. If you set up the restrictions and connections correctly the village will take care of itself while your away. Especially when you setup a militia with the eye of odin.

Settling Down Too Fast
Before you decide on where to build your village. Explore a little to find the spawns, terrain qualities, defensive fortification placements. Take your time and find a spot that is suitable to you. If you want to build near the water or you want to build further inland.

Placing to many flags fast
Place flags only as you grow your area of influence. Placing too far from your village will cause the ai to traverse into danger from animals to cold weather. A big issue many players have is placing many wood flags. The ai will tell you when they run out of wood within the area of the flag. Instead of just placing a new one, go and demo the old one for its resources. They give 100% back so its better to place one at a time and work within that field. This way your ai won't create fields of decaying resources.

Fighting unnecessary battles
If you come across mobs or wulfars. You can run away till your ready for the fight. Tier 1 tools won't be very effective or damaging. Even Tier 1 weapons aren't as effective till you have some points in combat. Take your time to get more gear and clothes. Once you have a barracks you can train your combat skill without losing health.

Placing blueprints:
Many new players will place down all the blueprints they can. This will cause your builder to work on all of them at once and not in any particular order. So try to limit yourself to 3 or 4 blueprints at a time at the start. Use the terrain field leveler to mark where you want a structure to go.

Limiting Storage
Buildings have many ways to control input and output. Take some time and explore the menu for each structure. Try to specialize your structures for what your need at the time.

Should villagers use sleds/carts
Understand that villagers would become way to productive if they all had a massive increase in inventory space. Sleds/carts are best used by Markets. Why the market? Well the market is the logistical support between outposts and your main village. Also within your village. Each villager assigned to the market can be given multiple chains of task for each warehouse. Take the time to incorporate the markets logistics into your village.

Using berries as food
Yes they do provide food and water. The best use for berries is as fish bait. Fishing is under utilized. One of the best dishes in the game so far uses fish. Since you can only farm berries in the spring and summer, you'll want a stock of them for autumn and winter.

Fishing
Fishing at the start seems to be slow and costly. The perks are only active during certain seasons, which doesn't seem helpful. Once you figure out fishing and the pros and cons you'll see that it is the best food source. Take the time to set farms and storage to allow for berries to be used through the year and only accessible to your fishers. This combined with cooks to make fish soups will help keep a large population of villagers fed.

Boats and docks
The current boats are useful for your fishers to increase there available list of fish. Different fish can show up under different weather, seasons, time of day and different areas around the island. Take time to go fish around the island. Once you've discovered those spots with fish jumping out of them, your fishers can be changed to go to those spots provided there is a boat docked on the pier or a dock nearby.

Don't compare this game to Others
Other different style games allow the player to play and explore at there pace. Aska is a much more complex game with manageable ai that will do the work for you while you are somewhere else. When you have the ai process complete and functioning, you'll be wondering what is next. For now we have a limited expansion so mostly you'll be trying to increase villager count. many experienced players get up 200+ at once. See how far you can get.

Stumps
Currently the game doesn't have an ai to uproot stumps. I hope in the future they resolve this issue. For now though this what I have come up with to resolve this. Firstly stop your wood cutters from gathering firewood altogether. They will break down logs which will cause the massive decay fields. Secondly Build a good amount of firewood storage in your lumber warehouse. This will cause the warehouse ai to attempt to fill them as well as your coalmaker ai to head out and pick them up. For longer distances, if you have a market bringing back firewood the ai will go to closest place to pickup firewood. Make sure when your low on firewood and high on coal to stop your coal making production for a while.