There are a few things about this game that are helpful to understand before starting your game.

You can't build other towns. You can extend your farming area around your city to a total of 3 hexes away late in the game though.

First off is this game is kinda centered around expeditions. That is a group of dudes that goes out, farms all the resources for you, completes quests, and kills bad guys. If you send out less than 6 guys, it'll generally end badly for you. When moving your expeditions, you will encounter random events. In the grand scheme of things, before turn 150-200, it is generally in your best interest to avoid these. There are times where you will get an easy one, and it will reward you with a rock, a shield, and a piece of bread or some such non-sense, but its more likely to injure, kill, or straight abduct your people. There are just sooooooo many dangerous you won't be equipped for, and so little reward. Wait till you get some decent equipped guys and maybe 10+ in the group. In doing so even some of the hard challenges can be won by shear numbers.

This might ruin your immersion or adventurous spirit, but you have been warned.

Make sure you always have wood, and food. Without a fire, your gathering is cut in half. Without food, you die. The more different types of food, the more bonuses you receive. Go to the "Manage Supplies" tab at the top after opening the expeditions page. While walking, activate all food you have. Once you settle in a camp, close it all down to one type that you either packed a lot more of than the other types, or that u can find from a nearby node while camped. Generally speaking, wood is everywhere. Once you figure out where u are going, if there is wood there, only take like 10 units of wood with you. It will lighten your load so you can bring back more, and just grab up wood as needed, or set a 2-4 gatherer on it the whole time. That way you don't gain too much wood, but still make enough to keep the fire going. After each event, you will need to go into the inventory screen and break down all the unwanted items, as they weigh too much.

You can only see resources on the map that you have researched, or that are able to be researched. If it is a "?" on the research tree, you can't see them. For this reason, there are several good places for research points early on, to see if a good resource is near. Elven wood, Monster bone, and Wicker. This lets you see Ancient wood, Dryad wood, Enchanted Bone, Dragon bone, and Nimblewood. Once we can see these, it gives a good idea early on what to focus on making.

When gathering or crafting things, the value of the first one is multiplied by 10. So if you have a 12 gatherer, it provides 120 gathering power on that node. All others after it, will be at half power. So if you have a 12 and an 8, instead of getting 200 gathering power on a node, you get 160. 120 + 40. So the most important one is the first guys on there. It will also move the most capable to the front, so don't worry about what order you drag them over. For this reason, farming multiple things at once by finding camps in-between 2-3 useful resources is the best use of your time, keep an eye out. Getting 200 out of the 2 mentioned above by putting them on 2 separate resources is better.

The difficulty ranking of enemy groups is denoted by a Skull icon above the group. 1-5 skulls, some different colors as well. These are a ROUGH estimation of their strength. There are so many times i've lost people taking chances on a 2 skull challenge event, or fighting a wandering pack of 2 skull difficulty only to get my♥♥♥♥♥handed to me. For on the map groups, you can click on them to see what is inside. Things like child wraiths, or goblin boss, or striga and be in a 2 skull group, and wreck your face. Pay attention to them and know just because its says 1-3 skulls, doesn't mean it will be easy, especially early game. ALSO clicking "Auto Resolve" on a battle has interesting results a lot of the time. I generally never click it unless its so easy i know i could kill it with 1 guy. If you click it on stuff that you can kill easy but can still damage you, auto resolve will random injure people that would never happen if you did the battle, and that can lead to losses. On the other hand, if the situation is COMPLETELY hopeless, you can sometimes auto battle out a win. You will most definitely have injured guys, but if its going to be a loss anyways, sometimes auto battle can win somehow. So as i said, unless its hopeless for you or them, i don't push it.

And lastly, you will lose people. It cannot be helped. The good news is that if you do it right, it won't devastate you. Keep a steady flow of people going and make sure to get a medic as early as you can, they save lives. Most of the people you will lose if you get to adventurous early on and do lots of events, but some will just happen without any action from you. A sudden hole will just pop up and swallow your people. No big deal, we can make more.

First things first, you must open your village and go to the tab up top called "Manage Supplies." You need to uncheck the box that says "Allow the use of new items" If you don't you will find that anything is fair game to burn or eat, and we don't want that. Select wood (or coal if its all you had) and unselect everything else. Same with food except the main food or foods your town can produce on its own. If you don't, you will burn precious other resources like elven wood, wicker, or specialty foods you make.

So all villages that I've seen start out with a fuel (wood or coal), and at least one food within 1 hex around your village. You can obviously restart over and over to get a good location, but in my experience its kind of pointless. Most games give you everything you need to start. There is always SOMETHING around you, and that's good enough.

Research is one of the main focuses early on in the game. Where you spend those precious starting points makes a huge deal on your progress. Its hard to say an easy "Do this every game" and win strat. One that wouldn't be that fun for replay, and two this game is too random for that to happen.

The basic idea is to mass produce and farm whatever resource is close to hand at the start. Getting too far away is dangerous. What you are looking for is a food source like, mushrooms, exotic fruit, or wheat. The rest do not work for this. Find some or start near some. Once you do farm a lot of it, and head back to the village. Now get to work on making pastures. This will do 2 things. It will make pastures, which give a chance for people to just show up and join you, and second they provide research points. Once you hit 10, destroy 2-3 and keep making them. Wood, food, wood is all that is needed for this. This will help you grow in population and research.

After this, start looking for other resources like wicker, spider silk (or vines), Furs of any type, and elven wood. Fur is one of the best things to farm early game. Its not too hard and you can make repeat armors over and over, of top of the fact that its useful in other places. The wicker and spider silk will help make gathering baskets which will give lots of research and make your normal non workers into quasi helpful gatherers, not to mention buffing your actual gatherers.

Once progressed far enough, and with ample elven wood, we are going to use a research point on the Smithy and make one using our elven wood. And maybe 2-3 more. These attract elves, which are very powerful units. We want these done kinda early, cause its like a 1% chance per smithy per turn to attract one. Not good odds so the earlier you get them the more turns you have to attract them.

So you start out with all humans. Due to events, buildings, and quests you can obtain a variety of minions to serve you. Most of the minions you can acquire will sorta suck. Just good for carrying stuff on expeditions and sacrificing themselves haha.

Humans:

-- Aside -- a lot of these can be grown from children. The first 3 listed are options at the start of the game, the rest become POSSIBLE options each time i child grows up. If you build specific buildings it will either make it more likely or available every time. --

Warrior: Warriors are fighters obviously. They have the notable ability to equip a 2 handed sword AND a shield. This should be made use of at all times. This is generally the only reason they are good. This is reasonably strong late game, and you will need alot of these early game, but not alot of usefulness outside of combat and physical challenges.

Gatherer: They gather things. The higher gathering the better. I generally only equip these with spears if i can help it. That way they enter battle protected from instant attacks of the enemy, as they have low hp generally. Useful on hunting challenges and not too much else. Still a must have, the better your gatherers, the quicker you progress.

Craftsman: The make the items that level your research and arm your dudes. Not useful in any way otherwise.

Hunter: These guys i like alot. Early game they can help gathering, and still be decent at the fight. They provide tons of tactical powers on various challenges. Stealth, Hunting, Combat, physical, and tons more. These guys are really useful early game, and still useful late game depending alot on level ups.

Medic: I have at least one of these guys in every town or group. They save lives. Heals units faster so they get out of the chance to death zone. Other than the Medic trait, herbalism, its random.

Scholar: I don't understand this class. Doesn't seem to have any real function and the variety of skill you get is so random its stupid. BUT because of that randomness they can be useful at times.

Inventor: This is like a super version of a Craftman. High crafting ability and generally high int and will. Various other things as well. Pretty useful for alot of different challenges as well as crafting, having 1-4 is a good idea.

Witch: Witch generally has magic ability, int, will, and usually some gathering ability. Rest is fairly random, but also comes with a variety alot like hunter. Folk lore, curse, medic, and so on. Fairly useful for magic encounters.

Sage: Male version of the witch as far as i can tell. Tons of randomness in these 2 classes, but magic and some gathering or craftmanship seems to be the only common elements.

Bandit: Pretty much useless. Low stats and skills and nothing really special about them. Generally high stealth and speech, but better places to get that.

Scavenger: Only use of these guys is they generally tend to have huge carrying capacity, so give them a 2 handed weapon and send them on expeditions to hold more stuff. Better options in demons later on.




Elves: From a few events and +attract elves buildings (Elven wood)

Forest Elves: These are the best! My favorite dudes in all the game. They come with tons of abilties much like a Hunter would, mixed with a Witch. On top of that, they have a passive that lets them attack like they have a spear with any weapon except blunt weapons. So ideally, you equip the biggest baddest ax on them. Generally Dragon Bone/Ancient Wood ax. Most of mine do upwards of 100-150 damage if the target is injured, which because of the spear strike as they come out, the enemy always is. These that much the same skill set preferences as hunters seem to, with an elven twist. Random magic and attractiveness.

Elven Wanderer: These seem more like the warrior cast of the elves. While still having the first strike spear ability of all elves, they seem to have higher hp and strength than the other elves. Still share the generally high willpower, attractiveness, and at least some modicome of magic.

Forest Elf Druid: Seems very similar to a which or sage variant of elf. High will power and attractiveness, but lower hp and strength than usual. In that place decent speech, curse ability, and some gathering or craft.


Orcs: From a few events and +attract Orcs buildings (Steel)

Orc Worker: Not the best dudes, but not useless either. Depending on level ups skills, and starting skills, these can be useful as a craftsman or a gatherer that can also fight much better than normal workers, but generally won't have as high a work stat as well.

Orc Fighter: These guys are generally a stronger version of the human warriors. High health, high damage, high str. These guys are very useful and quite strong. Using blunt, spear, or axe these guys can kill it in combat, strength challenges, will, and various others. Really good class.

Goblins:

I have yet to get a goblin that was worthwhile. I wouldn't go for these in building attraction. Goblin worker was ok, but the humans were better. Goblin units in general seem to have really low hp, and stats making thier usefulness go down.

Demons: From a few events and +attract Demon buildings (Dragon Bone)

Demons come in tons of different types. Some are quite good, most suck really bad. The good news is that most can carry a large amount of weight, and at certain points you can sacrafice demons to save your party. If you have a crap demon, like a giant crow, he can save ur party. The main way to tell if they are going to be useful is how much they can wear equipment wise. Those that can only use trinkets will suck. Not always though. Wraith Child is pretty good sometimes, but can't use a full set of equip and a few others. There are however demons that can use gear, and thier HP and strength and attack are usuually really high. Worth keeping if you can find them. I can't remember all the names for these, as i renamed them.

Bad ones:
Pineconettes
Giant Crow
Hohlick
Fat Rat

Decent ones:
Skshack
Child Wraith (Even though they cant wear gear, with level ups they can hit in the 70-100 range)
Liho

Also as an aside, for some reason in the random story encounters, some of these i gathered with the game saying its a demon, after the challenge they register as beasts, and yet in the few places you can sacrafice a demon/ghost to get away, they can still be chosen. So i put them here, like Giant Crow and Fat rat.

Dwarves:

I've only ever gotten 1 dwarf to join me in my first game. He was a beast. I will need to see more of them and add the info later.

Animals:

As far as animals go, i'm not really sure about them. Generally they are just good for taking to carry weight around when hauling goods about. I have had a few weird games. A +21 Medic bear, and a dog with +18 magic. No real rhyme or reason to any of it as far as i can tell.

Most of the resources are tiered versions of the rest. Even so, many have different traits when making items. A small number of the highest tiered resources are a lot better than the rest. You should pick your path carefully on research points to quickly access these materials based on availability and location. The resources not mentioned here aren't useless, but much less useful in the grand scheme of things.

Dragon Bone:
By far the most useful resource in the game to me. I prefer stocking up on leech damage, this is responsible for that. Its very good in axes, swords, armor, shields, rings, and artifacts. With one point in Monster Bone early in the game, u can see the greyed out dragon bones as u travel the map and explore. Its also responsible for the + attract Demons in buildings. First too unlock unless there is ancient wood around, then i might do that first.

Moonstone:
This makes some of the strongest items in the game. Also useful in buildings to max out effects. It adds Magic or max strength effects on most items. 44 damage sword? no problem. Usually 3rd one i unlock after dragon bone and ancient wood.

Dragon Leather:
This is another great item. It's used in baskets, buildings, armor, shields, rings/trinkets. It adds leech to most items its in. Most of my armor is made of this and dragon bone.

Diamonds:
This is a must for almost all jewelry. If used as the 2nd component, it increases the effects on almost all items beyond anything else. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part its a must have in all jewelry. Makes a good artifact as the first component as well. This also has a kind of neat feature if used in armor. it adds a random skill trait to the armor you are making. Anything from magic to str. Gathering to Leech. Anything. If you craft a bunch you can generally come up with some really nice stuff.

Ancient Wood:
This makes the best axes and spears. Combined with dragon bone or moonstone depending. It also can be used in several buildings to help max the effects. It makes the best medic artifact in the game. This makes some of the best early game weapons for me. I get this first or 2nd, then unlock spears and you will start having a much better time of it when it comes to fighting.

Mithril:
This is probably the last of the top materials i unlock. Makes the best hammer for crafting, and an excellent artifact. On top of that it can make some pretty beefy armors as well.


I generally get ancient wood first. I need to unlock Elven wood early on for recruiting elves, and that opens up being able to locate this. It also tends to be the most plentiful of all the top tier resources, making it a fairly accessible one. I follow it with either dragon bone or moonstone. These tend to be kind of rare and far away. Its based on RNG, but in general terms. Getting those gets several good options for weapons, which can be turned out for crazy exp and much better soldiers. Most everything i do is picked based around these resources listed here. Wasting time on the less items is well... a waste of time. There are different occasions where spider silk or clay is worth picking up early on as well.

When crafting items, there are only 2 resources that really matter, and a catalyst. The top 2 determine all the power and stats, and the catalyst determines the crit crafting rate of making "good" items.

With most rings and artifacts, the top element makes 90% of the stats on the item.

Each time you make an item, you have a 20% chance to make a "bad" quality item. This 20% chance is lowered by 1% for each level of craft on the first worker making the item down to a minimum of 1%. So at a craft level of 5, you have a 15% chance to make a bad item. At 19, its 1% and you are capped out.

The chance of creating a "good" item is based on the catalyst AND having a Smithy built. I far as i know, you can't make good items without a Smithy. Once you have one, you will notice as you make items that in the upper right there is a yellow star with a percentage next to it. That is the chance of crafting a good item. Coal is a really good generic resource for this, at 12% most of the time. The top rate is 14.9%.

A "bad" item lowers its damage and makes it heavier. A "good" item increase in damage and gets lighter. It increases all damage, physical, poison, and leech. Its very good and by the end of the game you will probably be crafting over and over to get those good quality items. They are a pretty big advantage.

Notable items:

Leshy's hair: (Spear)
- Best early game spear
- Ancient wood + Moonstone
- When your troops are weaker, like in early game spears provide a bit of extra damage and defensive positioning. The extra damage comes from the poison. When you place the unit out, he attacks as he comes out. This makes the enemy "injured". Thus the 10 poison damage is changed to 20 poison damage. On top of that your guy is put in front of that unit so it attacks first and can't be "speared" by the enemy being placed on the board. The damage is the same if you use dragon bone, but it lowers the base damage of the weapon to give it leech, and the base damage determines the initial spear strike, so moonstone is better.

Dragon's Bane:
- Best Axe in the game
- Dragon Bone + Ancient Wood or Dragon Bone + Moonstone
- The first is best weapon in the game when equipped on an elf. 2nd is better for everyone else. 22 leech. Combined with leech armor you can hit 45 leech. Hard to kill people with that much leech. Leech damage is added to actual damage, it just also steals life. So a guy hitting for 52 with 45 leech, is hitting for 97. A guy hitting for 52, and 45 leech, and 10 poison is 117 if they are inured.

Dragonslayer Signet: (Ring)
- Leech ring + good fighting mods for some challenges.
- Dragonbone + Diamond

Root of Life: (Artifact)
- Medic item, worked wonders on my Magical Medic Bear.
- Ancient Wood + xxxx

Small Amber Charm: (Ring)
- Gathering item
- Amber + Amber

Diamond Ring: (Ring)
- Useful challenge mods. Gives the spear type attack in Social, Tactical, Int, and Hex Challenges. I put 1 of these on most of my non-warrior guys cause thats alot of advantage there on one item. Stacking them doesn't help though.
- Diamond + xxx

Syrin's Bracelet: (Ring)
- Gives spear type attack to physical and Sickness Challenges.
- Jade + xxx

Tree Praying Necklace: (Ring)
- Provides a good magic bonus for a ring, and quite good physical challenge bonuses.
- Ancient Wood + Diamond

Living Abyss Guard: (Heavy Armor)
- These provide random bonuses along with a quite high armor and shield value. If you make a "good" craft along with a good bonus like Strength, Traps, Dex, Magic, or several other useful mods, they can be amazing.
- Mythil + Diamond

Full Plate Armor: (Heavy Armor)
- This is a much lighter version of the pervious armor with a heavy +8 will bonus. In exchange for being lighter and the added will, you lose like 13 total protection though. It is still a great item as a crit gets it to less than 50 wieght. On some characters, that makes all the difference.
- Gold + Diamond