What to do in the first 15-20 days of a new game.
Preface
Hi there, after several attempts in which I felt kind of lost about how to begin a game, I thought I’d write a short guide about my initial experiences in order to give new players an idea about what to focus on in the early game, so hopefully you won’t have to restart as many times as I had to 🙂
I’m still pretty new to the game myself so far, so this is going to be a work in progress guide which I will likely change over time. But since there are basically no guides which could help new players get into the game, I thought sharing my findings is better than nothing, so please keep this in mind.
I’ve only played on relentless mode so far, so the initial setup might vary slightly if you play in the forgiving mode, but the general concepts should be comparable.
Initial mages
When you start a new game in relentless mode, you get to chose two mages to start with. The key stat to look out for in my opinion is HP, try to get that as high as possible because mages with low HP might get an unlucky hit or two in the initial underschool battles and an early death would cripple your game quite drastically.
Other than that, focus on useful medals. I especially found the medal which improves your mage’s conviction whenever they perform a haul task to be very useful, since in the beginning you don’t really have a recreation option and conviction can quickly become a problem. So fixing conviction whenever your mage hauls something is an easy way to deal with this in the early game.
Initial layout
Your lower level should be 5 walls high so a wand crafting machine and a research machine fits in there. They can both go into the same room since they both profit from the workshop room bonus. Next to that, build a class room with a training stone. This lower level should be 5 walls high and have a floor as a roof to which you connect via a stairway in your workshop.
On the second floor, you can expand the roof over the edge of the outer wall a little bit, make sure to use the full possible width there. You will need a skewed room here on the outer edge with at least 6 cots which can serve as a sleeping room. The sleeping room bonus is quite important in the early game since it allows your mages to do more work per day while you can’t hire new mages yet. In order to get the bonus, your outer wall needs to be of height 7 and your inside wall needs to be of height 4. Then connect them with a skewed roof and it should count as a sleeping room.
Initial research
My advice would be to start research as soon as possible. Use your ghost mage for research because they don’t have to sleep and can research during the night. Most important research at the beginning is the berry farming, followed by the cooking pot research and after that go for the basic rituals because you will need it in order to hire additional mages.
Getting the food supply up and running has the highest priority because food is the most limiting factor in the early game. Additionally, you will need the berries for the fog repelling ritual and you don’t want to run out of berries when the fog is next to your door.
Once you have completed the cooking pot research, add a kitchen room on your second floor, next to the sleeping room. It can have a flat roof again so make sure to make it wide enough so another stairway to the next level fits in there.
After that you have various options, I prefer to get the research done which is needed to get the kitchen room bonus (check out tooltips for room bonuses) and the research needed for a dining room after that. Another important research is the grammophone research since it can give your mages a way to regain conviction.
Next important research is the medical bed. Make sure you mine at least 24 iron early on since you will need 12 per medical bed and you should get two medical beds up as soon as possible. Do not fight battles in the underschool before you have these set up or your mages will suffer breakdowns due to injuries and you won’t have a chance to cure them!
Initial recruits
If you have a sleeping room with 6 cots, try to always educate three students at a time. Have one of your mages prioritize teaching over anything else so they get trained up as fast as possible. For the first three students, the wands you give them basically don’t matter since you just want to get them fully trained as fast as possible and then let them graduate and drop 6 adept scrolls.
For the second group of students, two of them should have lightning wands because you need two staff members with lightning skill lvl 3 in order to sign up gifted students. That means once this group is fully trained, hire both lightning students as new staff members and after that only recruit gifted students.
Initial underschool battles
Again, do not start fighting in the underschool before you have at least two medical beds built and ready to use. As soon as your mages lose one HP, they will suffer pain and will quickly get breakdowns if you don’t have a medical bed to treat them in after battle.
Other than that, it doesn’t really matter which wands you use for the first few fights, the opponents will be pretty weak so any wand will do. Generally, I found fire wands and dark wands to be the most effective in battles, but I suppose that’s a matter of taste.
You just want to do enough battles to get the arcane scrolls you need in order to progress your research at the start. Doing more fights than necessary doesn’t really help you because your initial students will all be quite bad and have a low stat cap, so you don’t want to keep them as staff members anyway. Don’t bother fighting too much before you unlock better wands through research and have the setup ready to hire gifted students only.
Conclusion
I hope these initial tips will help you to get a smooth start so you don’t have to restart too often. I’ll likely expand this guide over time, but this should get you through the first 15-20 days without too many problems.
