This is a lovely, addictive little game which rewards trial and error, but it might leave you feeling a bit directionless at the beginning. Here are a few tips to help on your first runs, and a Quick Start Goals section at the bottom, which lists a few goals to aim for that you might have expected to see in a tutorial.

Last updated: 23.02.25

Research new technologies, build new rooms and recruit students to graduate, promote to apprentices or hire as staff. Push back the fog further and further and explore underground rooms to reveal new resources and tasks.

Your aim with the majority of students that come through your school is for you to fulfil their trials and graduate them as soon as possible, to gain relics to enhance your staff.

A 'basic' building style (rather than the recommended 'balanced) can help while you get hold of the game mechanics (or if you just want a less frustrating juggling act). It reduces some of the limitations for the specialised rooms types, so that, for example, dormitories will no longer need to be ‘interior’ and surrounded by other rooms.

You can’t go wrong starting with an earth, nature and lightning mage, as these will be good at gathering the most important starting resources and speeding research.

The most important skills each class has for the early game are:

• Earth: Mining and building construction
  
• Nature: Chopping trees and harvesting plants
  
• Lightning: Research
  
• Fire: Cooking and hunting
  
• Air: Assembling furniture and hauling
  
• Dark: Quilting
  
• Water: Alchemy and cleaning (perhaps least important for starting out)

Vivified are tanky but slow, wolfkin are fast but a bit more squishy, and humans have a lot of mana but low attack power. All are viable and worth experimenting with.

An earth vivified can taunt and buff itself with armour to be an excellent front line tank, and will also hit like a truck.

Your school founder has the useful ability to go through walls, floors and layers of rock. Use this to your advantage for urgent tasks.

Ignore the tempting sign to explore underground until you research and build a medical bed.

If you are missing a resource, you probably need to push back the fog further to find it, or, occasionally, go underground.

Double click any resource to highlight all nearby resources of that type.

If you get a rain warning early on, when all your harvested resources are sitting outside, emergency build a couple of extra chests and set everyone’s priority to hauling so it doesn’t all disintegrate.

Going down the first few research nodes in the dark magic path will allow you to make quilted carriers. These automatically haul your goods around for you, which is amazing.

As you get more staff, why not set someone on a night schedule? Plenty of resources can only be gathered at night.

Early on, cover the rooms with a new level of floor rather than a roof, as you’ll probably build another level before it rains.

You can put things underground. Why not build crafting stations in the mana font or codex rooms early on? This will save space in your rooms above ground. Actually, it's a great place to put your Arcane Secretary at the beginning, so your lightning mage has to go less far to recharge.

From the second floor upwards you can build rooms hanging out to the side of your building as far as they are supported (arches help). You can fill in gaps on the ground floor later, once you research building foundations.

Make use of the room goal function to find out what you need to reach the specialisation you’re aiming for. Don’t pour a lot of time and effort into a room only to realise too late that it needed to be silent and towered.

You may need to keep a random room for recreation at the beginning, since keywords for rec rooms can be hard to hit on balanced. The plus side being, if it isn’t an official rec room, it can be next to a room that needs ‘silent’.

Try and keep frequently used rooms together. If your students have to climb up and down five flights of stairs to eat a meal, it's cutting into the rest of their day. You'll unlock ways to increase mobility further down the tree, at which point you can get more crazy with your architecture.

General
Make a mirror to change appearances.

Selecting a relic in a mage's menu doesn't equip it until you research and build an attunement bench. You may need to tell the mage to manually attune by right clicking the bench to make sure they get round to it.


Students
Students drop relics when they graduate. Relics can be equipped to give helpful bonuses, and are one of the easiest ways to make your staff stronger. If you fulfil a student’s trials before they graduate (dance a certain number of hours, cast while rested etc.), it will be a higher level relic.

If you give a tier II wand to a student, they will gain a higher level cap and an extra trial to fill out, resulting in an even higher level relic.

Create a custom schedule for students who are ready to graduate but you would like to keep a bit longer - switch them to do tasks rather than going to class. Extra minions!

If you chose earth, lightning and nature for your starting staff, then focus on getting fire students at the beginning and, when you find one you like, hire them at the ritual stone. Fire mages specialise in cooking, and are needed to craft better recipes that will have a positive impact on morale (conviction).

When summoning students, you have the option to choose normal or gifted ones. Gifted students have an extra relic slot. Avoid summoning them until later in the game, as they cost gnosis shards.

If gifted students turn up at your school for free during an event, however, seriously consider hiring some of them.


Staff
Recruit staff early! Don’t wait until you can go the apprentice route – a few extra staff early on will make your life much easier.

Don't get too attached. Your staff will stick around a lot longer than your students, but at some point further down the line you should start retiring them to replace them with stronger candidates.


Apprentices
Apprentices are expensive! Don't rush making them until you need them. If you have a ritual that needs a student with lvl 4 in a skill, it's cheaper to give an initiate a tier II wand than make them an apprentice.

Apprentices are cool! They are needed for specific rituals, allow you to dual class (eg. turn a dark initiate into a nature apprentice for a dark/nature student), and they give extra high level relics when graduating/being hired.

Depending what element you choose for your apprentice, they will gain extra magic skills, an extra relic slot, or specific combat bonuses. Dual classing into a different magic element than their initiate one will mean they can access the actions of both classes in combat. To see the possibilities, look at the chart on the bottom left in their mage sheet.

To train apprentice skills, you need an apprentice station for each skill they need to improve. As apprentice skills take longer to train, place the stations in an advanced classroom and restrict teaching access on the station to members of staff with high levels in that magic skill.

Running through these steps (reading the in game tutorial pages as needed) should get you off to a decent start in the game!

Basic survival

• Set all visible trees and stones to be gathered, as well as a few berries
  
  
• Build 2-3 rooms on your foundation
  
  
• Build 3 cots and an Arcane Secretary for research
  
  
• Prioritise research on your mage with the highest lightning skill
  
  
• Grow 2 gutberry plants, 2 bitterrice plants, and hunt 2 direrats. Cook a meal at a gruel pot
  
  
• Build a medical bed
  
  
• Go on an adventure underground so that someone can test out your new medical bed

Your first students

• Build a Wand Shaper and craft 2 wands
  
  
• Recruit 2 students and build a learning stone
  
  
• Complete all 3 of a student’s tasks (if possible)
  
  
• Graduate 2 students

Bettering your staff

• Hire 1 student as a staff member (if you need more gnosis shards to do so, explore underground until you have enough)
  
  
• Attune a relic (you may need to research the bench you attune them at)
  
  
• Specialise rooms into an austere bedroom, dormitory, mess hall, classroom, and nurse’s office
  
  
• Equip a level 2 wand on a staff member (hints: build an alchemical bench and explore underground for an upgrade station)

Gradually expand your staff and student roster, explore further underground, and push back the fog. Who knows what you might find?



Thanks for taking the time to read! I hope it was helpful, and if you notice any mistakes or have anything to add, please let me know!