Starting Guide

This is a starting guide based on the common issues from other players. This is NOT a rulebook and whether or not this is followed is entirely optional. In addition, this guide is player made. It is not an official guide. Use at your own risk.

! Warning!: WIP. This guide is incomplete.

(*Written: version 15.10)

Controls

The controls for the game can be found in the tutorial book. Here are some of the ones you will use the most when you begin:

This is the button to adjust priorities

• Zone Control Window: Found by opening the zone overlay (Hotkey: `) And selecting the zone you wish to adjust for. Each zone should open a Large page containing several buttons at the top and some suggested structures. When in doubt on what structures to build for a zone, the suggested buildings in this window is a good place to start.
• Assign Families: Used to assign a family to a Zone and determine the tax method and amount. The first button from the left the on zone selection window. The picture is a page with a circle on the lower right corner.
• Adjust Priorities: The second button from the left is the button to adjust priorities.

For more information on zone and the controls, Go Here.

For more information on controls, Go Here.

Starting Families

Every game starts with 3 families (fishermen, farmers, and foragers), and your ruling family.

Starting with Fishermen

Fishermen will need to start with fishing rods or fishing nets. It is recommended to use fishing rods instead of nets at first because nets require yarn to repair. Yarn will require sheep and tailors to be produced, so until those two things are established in your settlement, fishing rods will be ideal.

*Priorities are not needed for fishermen. They only produce fish. It's not complicated

For more information on fishermen: Go here

Starting with Farmers

Farmers will need farmland to start working. Farmland cannot be constructed on forest tiles (Shown as dark green. Usually has lots of trees.) To get around this, you can place dirt path on the forest tiles and that will allow farmland to be built on top.

Priorities:

Farmers have several pages of priorities.

This is the priorities window of the farmland. The separate pages can be navigated by the tabs on the left.

• Products
  1. Grain and Rice grain: This refers to the farmer's priority for flailing. Flailing is required to produce grain (used by millers and brewers) and rice grain (used by any household as a source of grain to consume). The default for these will be set as 1. However, the priority for flailing is pretty low regardless of whether the priority is 1 or 10 (meaning farmers will plant and harvest everything before they consider flailing). If you want them to flail more, I would suggest decreasing their farmland area so they spend less time planting and have more time to flail.
  2. Cheese and Milk: These require milk to produce and satisfy the animal products for meals. Milk is produced by cows. Therefore, unless you have cows or do not mind buying milk from the caravan, you should change both of these from the default of 1 to 0.
  3. Apples and Pears: Be cautious. This priority refers to the harvesting of apples and pears from already present apple and pear trees. This will not change how your farmers plant trees. The controls for that will be in the tree page.
• Animals
  1. Cattle: Cattle can be obtained by the caravan. The females will produce milk which can be used to satisfy the animal products needs of villagers or be made into milk and cheese. The males will not produce milk, but can be used by the butchers to produce meat and hide.
  2. Chicken: Chickens can be obtained by the caravan. The females will produce eggs which can be used to satisfy the animal products needs of villagers. Chickens (male and female) will not produce hide at the butchers, but will produce meat.
  3. Sheep: Sheep can be obtained by the caravan. They produce wool, which is used by the tailors to produce yarn (which can then be used to make silk and clothes). It's important to get sheep early in the game so you can start obtaining wool. Villagers will require a source of clothes production by at least the autumn of the second year (1401). Lack of sheep and wool will result in a lack of clothes that can easily lead to your villagers dying from hypothermia. Therefore, of all the animals, it is recommended that you allow at least some sheep when you start the game. (Personally, I prefer 5-10 sheep, but I'm also a little biased. I love my sheep.)
• Soil
  

  This is the soil priorities page and an example of the crop details available to be seen. Hover over the ? button to view

All crops are set to 0 by default. If you want to plant anything, adjust this priority when you begin! Crop time, season, and harvest can be seen by the "?" button in next to each crop type.

• Trees

The default is set to 1 on apples and 0 on pears. If you want pears, you need to adjust this. To plant trees, you need to place the "plant trees" structure. For better fruit yields, It's recommended to space your trees out. (A checkerboard pattern should suffice.)

Starting with Foragers

Foragers will need a saw horse. The default priority is set to 1 wood, 6 planks. This is usually fine in the beginning, but when your first winter approaches, make sure your families have enough wood for firewood and adjust if needed.

Starting with your Ruling Family

When you start the game, your ruling family has everything. Your three starting families only have some money, but will not have meals, food or materials to build with. Since your ruling family starts with 300 planks and 100 wood, it's recommended that you distribute planks and wood (and straw if you're using it to build) when you start your game. This will allow families to start building right away. You can distribute by granting or selling. Selling requires a storefront. You should build a storefront in your warehouse as soon as the game starts. For meals, each person in a family will eat 3 meals a day and there are 15 days in a season. If you want to provide enough meals for a family to eat for a season, you will need 45 meals per person in a family. However, fishermen will start producing fish almost immediately and farmers will start harvesting as soon as day 4 (depending on speed and type of crop).

You can sell and grant through the warehouse book.

What To Grant At the Start:

• Meals: Anywhere from 20-50 meals per person. You start with a lot. Don't be stingy.
• Yarn: At least 1 per person to the fishing family
• Stone: 1-5 for each family. Varies depending on if families are told to build personal wells.

What to Sell At the Start:

Selling is easier than granting on items you don't know the specific amount of. Alternatively, you can check their market presence to see how much each family is in need of.

• Planks: About 100-200 is usually sufficient, but depends on the size of houses you build.
• Straw: (optional if you decide to build with it)

Zones

These are the zones you need to start with:

• Fishing Pool: For your fishermen.

• Royal Forest: For your foragers

• Farmland: For your farmers.
• Optional Zones:
  • Households: Structures in workzones can be used by their owners. (This means they will sleep in beds in their work zones) This makes household zones technically optional. However, providing both work and home zones will allow you to tax both money (fee farm) and products (socage).
  • Public Area: Wells in public areas can be used by all. If you provide wells in public areas, you will not need to give your villagers the stone to build their own personal wells
  • Marketplace: Marketplace can be used to allow your villagers to sell their goods. This is optional because you can opt to have your work zones contain storefronts instead.

Household Zone

Here are the minimum structures a household will need:

• Bed (Double or single. Double is required for pregnancies)
• Cooking Table and Cauldron (Both used to cook foods)
• Wooden Block (Used to turn wood into firewood. Firewood is needed to cook and to light campfires)
• Campfires (required by mid autumn at the latest. Will provide heat)
• Walls and Roofing (required by winter. Roofing and walls need to encase a minimum of the beds and campfire.)

Next Steps

After you've settled down your starting families, it's a good idea to take in more families. You will be needing an inn. You might also want to start on your clergy. If you're interested in animals for your farmers, you'll want to allow the caravan. There are many more aspects to the game. It's best if you consider your first save an experiment and explore what strategies you'd like to use and what your unique playstyle is. Have fun and don't forget that the Discord welcomes anyone that wants questions!

Here are some pages that might be helpful if you want to be extra prepared:

• Professions
• Economy Guide