Getting Started

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Getting started in Towns can be a daunting task. You are dumped in the middle of the wilderness with nothing but 11 Civilians and are expected to survive! But with these guides, hopefully things will become a little clearer.

Good luck, and Welcome to Towns!

Creating a Map

Currently there are six map types to choose from: Normal, Desert, Jungle, Mixed, Snow, and Mountains.

• Normal maps are mostly grassland, often bisected by a river, and generally contain one or two other bodies of water. Some sand will be found near water, and there will also be a small area of jungle somewhere on the map.
  • Hostiles that spawn on the surface of such maps include Froggys,Toadys in the jungle, Tree Keepers on grassland, and sometimes werepigs.
  • Plant based food sources available are apples, pears, wheat, and sugarcane on grassland, and bananas, blue radish, and jungle mushroom in the jungle.
  • Animals include, wild chickens, wild cows, wild badgers, bulls, birds, boars, wild pigs, and skootenbeeten. Of those, chickens, cows, pigs, badgers and skootenbeeten can be farmed. Other animals spawn only upon map creation, and are therefore a limited resource.
  • Other resources include trees, pine trees, bamboo, jungle trees, palm trees, stone, mud (dropped from mining dirt), flowers, and mushroom bushes.

• Desert maps are comprised mostly of sand, with a small amount of grassland found near water. Unique to desert maps are unifallow. This is the only map type upon which they will spawn.
  • Hostiles spawning on the surface when the map is created are black snakecrabs and yellow snakecrabs.
  • Plant based food is limited to cactus fruit.
  • Animals available are wild unifallows and wild chickens, both of which can be farmed. Since no birds are spawned, the only way to obtain boots of haste is from the random drops when hostiles are killed.
  • Palm trees are the only trees that spawn upon map creation, so there is no threat of encountering tree keepers. Other resources include sand, stone, and dirt/mud.

• Jungle maps are mostly jungle, with a river running through the map and some sand located near the water.
  • Hostiles specific to the jungle are brownies of all sorts (hunter, warrior, chieftan, and bat rider). These will spawn near tree stumps. Froggys and toadys are also found scattered around the map, with higher concentrations found in and around "rooms" made from jungle fence and jungle door. Totem poles are often located near these "rooms." Since neither jungle fence, jungle door nor totem poles can be player created, they will only be found on jungle maps.
  • Plant based foods include bananas, blue radishes, jungle mushrooms, and sugarcane. Bananas and blue radishes can be combined at a baker's table to create jungle salad. Jungle salad is much more than the sum of it's parts, as it fulfills 90% hunger, compared to the 20% of either bananas or blue radishes. This is particularly valuable, since two of the easiest means of staving off starvation early in the game, milk from cow farms and bread from wheat, are not available upon creation of a jungle map.
  • Animal food sources seem to be limited to skootenbeeten, which gives the player the ability to obtain only raw poultry and eggs.
  • Other resources available include jungle trees, bamboo, palm trees, stone, and mud.

• Mixed maps allow nearly every type or tree, animal, food source, and hostile to spawn naturally.
  • All types of surface hostiles have a possibility of spawning upon creation of a mixed map. These include Yetis on snow, froggys, toadys, brownies on jungle, both black and yellow snakecrabs on desert, and tree keepers on grassland.
  • Nearly all animals can also be found on these maps; wild badgers, wild chickens, wild cows, wild pigs, skootenbeeten, all of which can be farmed, producing their non-wild counterparts. Other animals include birds, roosters, bulls, boars, reindeer, and does, all of which spawn only upon creation of the map and cannot be farmed, making them a finite resource.
  • Cactus fruit, snowcherry trees, cave mushrooms, wheat, apples, pears, sugarcane, blue radishes, bananas, and jungle mushrooms are all available to the player on a mixed map.
  • Other resources include flowers, mushroom bushes, trees, pine trees, palm trees, snow trees, bamboo, jungle trees, sand, snow, mud, and stone.

• Snow maps are almost entirely snow covered, with some small patches of grassland.
  • Yeti will always spawn on the snow, and it is possible that tree keepers might spawn on the areas of grassland.
  • Reindeer and does will populate on snow, birds can populate on either snow or grassland, and bulls, boars, roosters, badgers, pigs, cows, and chickens have a chance of spawning on grassland.
  • Snow trees, snowcherry trees, and cave mushrooms are all available for harvest and cultivation on the snow, while grassland may provide wheat, flowers, bamboo, sugarcane, apple and pear trees, and pine trees.

• Mountain maps, introduced in v10, are the only maps to reach a height of 14 levels (all other maps have 12). They have a wide variety of environments, containing grassland, jungle, and sand at the lower levels (1-8), and snow at higher elevations (9-14). They also have the smallest amount of surface water on any of the maps.
  • Froggys and toadys can be found in the jungle, yetis on snow, and tree keepers can be found on the grassland.
  • Wild badgers, bulls, wild cows, wild pigs, wild chickens, wild skootenbeeten, roosters, and birds can all be found on mountain maps.
  • Nearly all plants are available here, including jungle trees, jungle mushrooms, bananas, blue radishes, flowers, trees, pine trees, palm trees, wheat, sugarcane, mushroom bushes, bamboo, snowcherry trees, snow trees, and cave mushrooms can all be found in their native environments.

• All maps spawn with gravel on the surface, and many will have at least one other mine-able resource (namely coal, copper, or iron).

General Dangers

Carnivorous Plants

Carnivorous plants can be found on many maps, nestled in amongst trees. These will attack any citizen, animal or hostile they come into contact with, doing damage and inflicting bleeding and stunned on them, up to and including death. Neither citizens nor animals will detour around these plants in the wild. Often, when an animal is killed by a carnivorous plant, either meat or bones will be dropped This can be useful early in the game, as it can allow you to make bone armor and/or weapons, which are (usually) substantially better than wooden armor and weapons. The drawback is that while collecting those materials, there is a high possibility that the citizen will also be harmed by the carnivorous plant. These plants can be "gathered" by right clicking on the plant, and choosing that option from the menu.

Mining and Water

Citizens will follow orders explicitly, regardless of danger to themselves. Often gravel at surface level will be located next to or above water. Be careful when directing mining operations, as mining above water can cause citizens to fall into the water and drown. There is also danger when mining below the surface, as tunneling under water can cause your dungeons to flood. Flooding will not only drown your citizens, but it will also destroy any items that are in the way. It's a good idea to scroll up or down a level when working near water, just to make sure no catastrophes occur. And it is not necessary to connect to water directly; it can (and will) move diagonally into an empty space, given the opportunity.

Stockpiling & Farming

Stockpiles can be very helpful for gathering resources and tools in a convenient place. You can create stockpiles for raw materials, raw food, prepared food, utilities, furniture, ITEs, armor, weapons, and decorations. Farming can make sure that all of the necessities of life are easily available to your town. Your citizens will work almost single-mindedly to fulfill the orders you give them. While they will ignore the danger posed by carnivorous plants and march straight through them, they will not ignore hostiles that come into their line of sight. Once combat has begun, it is a fight to the death. If the citizen survives and sees no other hostiles, they will continue with their tasks or take a rest in the hospital if one is available until they've healed. If, however, another hostile grabs their attention, they will again engage, regardless of any injuries they have. It is, in fact, possible to destroy your entire population by having them stockpile or farm.

First priority: Building a Carpentry and Masonry

At the beginning you will need Wood and Stone to make most of the early items. They are two basic construction resources, and should always be the first thing you do upon starting a new map.

Gathering Wood

To obtain wood, choose the chop (axe) command from the bottom menu, and click an area over some trees. Note that you cannot (and probably should not) chop fruit-bearing trees by default, so look for some normal trees close to your vicinity. Your townies will run up to the trees and begin cutting, turning the trees into wood.

Gathering Stone

Take a look around your starting area and you should be able to see some grey stone in clumps. Surface stone is a lot easier to gather than underground. Select the mine (pickaxe) command from the bottom menu, and click an area over some stone. If the stone is the surface layer your townies walk upon, then you will need to right click one of the pieces of stone and select "dig a ladder". The townies will carve a ladder into the stone, which will allow them to access the stone. You will need to change the level to 0 instead of 1 before you select this stone for mining. Either use your mouse-wheel or the arrows near the mini-map in the top right of the screen.

Carpentry

Making a carpentry zone is simple. In the bottom menu choose zones then select carpentry from the new window. Click out an area where you wish the carpentry to go, making it at least 3x3 (so the plan turns green). If there are any plants, trees or hills in the way, either remove them with the bottom menu functions, or build somewhere else for now.

Now you have your carpentry zone, you need to build your first utility; the carpentry bench. To build this, in the right menu, choose utilities then carpentry bench. Make sure you place the bench in your carpentry zone. A townie will run to grab a piece of wood that you've harvested, and place the bench where you requested.

This carpentry bench can be used to create the next utility which is the wood detailer. Follow the same process as before, but request the wood detailer instead. Again place it in the carpentry zone, but this time your townies will need a piece of stone in addition to more wood. Make sure you have enough of both available if the detailer is not being constructed.

Masonry

The last part of the basic production process is the masonry. From the bottom menu again choose zones and masonry. I recommend placing this close to your existing carpentry. Inside the masonry place a mason's bench (from the right menu, utilities).

Now you have all the tools required to manufacture basic weapons, armours and walls. Later you will need other resources such as copper, coal and iron to make advanced items, but they all start with the carpentry bench, wood detailer and mason's bench.

Food

Main article: Food
In order for your townies to survive, you will need food. The easiest way to feed them is by gathering Apples and Pears from fruit trees. However this is the easiest but not the most efficient. The best early-game method is by baking.

Baking

Baking is when you make bread from flour, which is milled from wheat. To start, you'll need a bakery zone properly equipped with a baker's table and baker's oven. The last required building is a mill.

To make more advanced baked goods, you will need fruit to make apple pies or pear pies and you will need meat to make meat pies.

Farm

Main article: Planting

You can follow these steps to set up a basic wheat farm:

• Till the land you require to be turned into a farm. Start off with a small amount, so your villagers do not die trying to gather seeds from too far away.
• Use the right menu and select 'planting' (a wheat icon). The next menu will let you select which farm to plant. Choose wheat for now, and cover your tilled land with it.
• Find some wild wheat on the map. It only grows on grassland, and usually can be found on low elevation levels. Be careful not to harvest any wheat near hostiles as your townies could die.
• Use the harvest command from the bottom menu to have it cut into wheat. The townies will head out and cut it, turn it into seeds and plant it. (If they do not do this soon, you will want to increase the priority of Gathering and Harvesting under the priorities panel.)
• Construct a mill using the right menu, under utilties. Townies are set to use the mill by default.

Production Menu

Main article: Production Menu

To actually keep production of flour and bread constantly going to feed your hungry townies, you'll want to enable automatic production. To do this, open up the left menu, and head to food, gathering, trees and plants. Here you will find wheat, and you'll want to increase the right number to two. This ensures townies will continually harvest wheat so you have a minimum of two.

You'll also want to tell them to automatically bake the bread, so head back two steps on the left menu, and choose baking. From here, increase the right hand value of bread to two. This will ensure that you always have two loaves of bread manufactured for eating.

At the moment, wheat is automatically turned into flour, so you do not need to set up this automatic production. To enable/disable wheat production, you have to right click on your mill and turn automatic production on or off. (On by default).

You now know the basics of food production, so why not planting some apple or pear trees, and start baking apple pies or pear pies instead? They are much more filling than boring bland bread! I highly recommend also making a small tree farm to chop wood from, to prevent your townies spawning too many tree keepers, and getting killed by surface enemies. The tree farm gives you an unlimited amount of trees.

Weapons, Armor and Soldiers

By now you will probably have lost a few villagers to surface hostiles. Luckily, most surface opponents will lose to a villager who is equipped with wooden longswords and armor.

Weapons

The simplest and most effective wooden weapon is the wooden longsword. You will already have the required carpentry bench and wood detailer, so to request a wooden longsword, enter the left menu and click on the militaries button, followed by weapons and finally wood. Click on the icon or the left plus to queue a wooden longsword. A townie will soon grab two wood and craft the longsword for you, dropping it on the floor in the carpentry.

To equip the wooden longsword, open the citizens tab at the top of your screen, and click on the hand icon (labelled "Equip a weapon"), and choose the Wooden Longsword from the list. The selected townie will run up to the longsword and equip it. The townie will then automatically use it when engaged in combat, granting him greater accuracy (atk) defense (def) and damage.

You'll notice to the right of the equip a weapon icon, there is an autoequip button. The reason you should be wary of this button is the townie will travel across the entire map if it means finding a weapon which is only slightly better. This is a great way of killing off your townies, so for now leave the autoequip button alone.

Go ahead and manufacture a longsword for each of your townies, or for better starter weapons you should be able to craft stone spears with some extra stone.

Armor

Now your townies are armed, you'll want to protect them from taking damage in the first place. This is where armor comes in. Manufactured in a similar way, request a helmet, a piece of armor, a set of pants, and a pair of boots from the left menu. You'll find them under militaries, armors, wooden set.

These are again crafted with wood, but each set requires a longer time to make than weapons due to there being four pieces. Note that if you are running out of wood, you will want to set up a tree farm in order to safely harvest the large amounts of wood required to make armor for all your townies.

Open the citizens tab again at the top of your screen, and start equipping your armor on your townies. Note that unlike most armor, wood armor does not place speed penalties on your townies.

Soldiers

Your townies are brandishing deadly blunt longswords and impenetrable cumbersome armor, you'll want to turn at least one into a soldier. Choose a fully equipped townie in the citizens menu, and click the "convert to a soldier" button. The townie will disappear from the citizens menu, and appear on the soldiers menu. Close the citizens menu and open the soldiers menu now. You'll find it adjacent to the button for the citizens menu.

The brave soldier is now listed here, and some additional buttons can be found here in a group of four. These are:

• Assign as a guard
• Assign to patrol
• Assign as supervisor
• Add soldier to group

For now you'll want to keep your soldier(s) as the default guards. Guards wander around the town looking for hostiles to defeat. Whilst they do not leave the main town area normally, if another townie comes under attack the guard will soon head for the combat and join in the fight, hopefully saving your other townie in the process. Guards can often be far away when combat breaks out, which is why it is better to keep all your townies equipped with armor and weapons, but give the best ones to your soldiers. Don't forget to upgrade their equipment when you get the opportunity!

Hospital

It's worth noting at this point that when your townies and soldiers become injured, their wounds shall heal very slowly unless they are set to heal which only happens if they are wounded, severely wounded or mortally wounded. If they are are at any of those stages then there task will be set to heal in a hospital which shall gradually increase their heal rate faster. To speed up the healing process even more, you can add beds and a medicine cabinet in your hospital. (utilities -> furniture -> bed) and a medicine cabinet (utilities -> medicine cabinet).

Attracting more townies

By now, you have probably lost quite a few villagers to silly mistakes brave expeditions. You'll want to replace your lost population, and to do so you require two things; personal rooms and a better average happiness.

Personal Rooms

A personal room is essentially a bedroom for your townies. Each personal room belongs to an individual townie, so you will need more than your current population. Currently as the game requires nothing more than the basic zone, feel free to lay multiple 3x3 personal rooms side by side in the open to cover this prerequisite. You may want to place furniture/decorations in the personal rooms later, to improve personal happiness whilst townies sleep.

Happiness

Each townie has a happiness rating. This can be viewed by hovering your mouse over a citizen or soldier in the citizen or soldier info roster. Happiness is displayed as a percentage, from 0% to 100%. As townies work their happiness reduces, but when not performing tasks or near decorations their happiness increases. When you have built additional unoccupied personal rooms, try to let your townies rest by limiting their orders.

Keeping only the automatic food production active should be enough to increase happiness so you receive more townies as immigrants. Just don't forget to equip your new townies with armor and a weapon, or build more personal rooms if you want a higher population!

Caravans

Caravans are useful tools for improving your town's resource capability through trade and selling your extra resources.
Main article: Caravans

Getting one to come to town

You only need to have an accessible marketplace in your town to attract a caravan.

Advantages

Caravans are great for acquiring limited resources, and even getting them early such as buying Iron if you have yet to find any on your own. It is easy to sell excess stone, wood, mud, etc. in exchange for great products. Caravans also frequently include end game weapons and some of the best armor at very high prices. If you have acquired enough materials to trade for this high tier gear in the early game, you will enter the dungeon with a serious advantage.

Heroes/Taverns

Once you have a fairly well established town you're going to want to start exploring underground for profit and adventure!

Heroes

Heroes will explore the surface and any unexplored underground areas automatically at different rates depending on what type of hero they are and will return to town to eat, sleep, steal from you, or just generally laze about when they're hurt. You cannot directly equip items to your heroes like you can with townies, heroes instead will pick up items left on the ground and not in a stockpile or equipment rack. There are hopes that in future releases you can reward heroes with items.

Taverns

If you want heroes to show up in town you are going to have to build a tavern to attract some to stay and explore the dungeon. The amount of and different kinds of heroes you can get are determined by a combination of how many townies you have and location/availability of tavern rooms. Until you have at least 16 townies you will only be able to keep 3 heroes in your town, so you will generally want to start with at least 3 tavern rooms even though some do not require rooms. Do keep in mind that you will need at least one tavern (5x5 minimum size) and tavern rooms (3x3 minimum size, one per hero for most hero types).

The Dungeon

You will need access to the dungeons for your heroes to explore, which is done by simply digging a stairway down into an empty area underground. The first level is found at map level -2 with more found at regular increments all of which you have to dig down into, so you don't have to worry about your town getting in too much trouble too quickly.

Also, you may want to disable any color gathering on your stockpiles or raw materials barrels, as you will have an over-abundance of green gel once your heroes start clearing out the first level of the dungeon filled with green slimes and spiders.

Protecting your Town from the Dungeon

Sometimes heroes will attack more than they can handle, and run back to the tavern to heal. Unfortunately, any dungeon monsters they were fighting will often follow them back into your town. A good way to protect your townies from this threat is to ensure the only route to the dungeon passes through a barracks. If you move some of your soldiers using the soldiers menu to Group 1, you can assign them to guard barracks 1, and they will idle at the first barracks zone you create. This means they will engage any monsters passing through it trying to enter the town. The barracks works like a gatehouse, keeping the monsters out. Just be sure to keep your soldiers equipment upgraded to deal with the increasing difficulty of monsters as you dig deeper.

Normal Map - Helpful Hints

So it's your first time playing, or you find yourself hitting road blocks and would like some pointers. Listed below is a helpful guide with the strategy I've found most effective. NOTE: This guide covers version 10b.

Before We Begin

You select the Normal map and after generating you are presented with a few civilians standing aimlessly in the middle of a forest or clearing. Now is a good time to pause the game with the space bar and familiarize yourself with the controls. Now is also a great time to go to the Game Options menu. It is suggested for your first play through you turn the Siege option to either disabled or easy. This will ensure you do not find yourself dealing with an overwhelming force of enemies. You will also want to turn the Newly built stockpiles/containers option to 'OFF.' Now when you place a container or stockpile you can better control what your townies will fill them with.

To gain several extra townies you can designate personal rooms before you start playing. Currently your population starts with enough happiness to attract more townies, so designating 15 personal rooms will allow you get a boost of 2-4 townies on top of the 11 you normally start with. Once you start playing delete the personal rooms and later replace them in your settlement, once it is built.

Finding A Home

While the game is still paused take the time to look around for any dangers your townies might face. You will want to steer clear of the jungle for now. If there are any carnivorous plants in the area you choose you will want to clear them out as well.

Once you have found a suitable (preferably somewhat flat) area to set up your Town, start clearing it! Along the bottom of the screen you will find the Orders Bar. Here, you can give orders such as Harvest, Chop and Dig. Once you choose a command, you can select a square area and put your Townsfolk to work. Please note you can hold down shift while selecting to use the current command multiple times. Give it a try with the chop command and get them to cut down some trees.

Now do the same but for harvest (for the fruit trees) and cut (for the bushes) do not cut bushes for now, as you will need them the plant tree farms. Once you have a few stone and wood, it's time to start preparing to build!

Wood Crafting

In the zones menu on the bottom bar, click Carpentry. Zone out an area somewhere in your clearing. It's recommended you place your carpentry somewhere that you can plant a tree farm just behind it. I recommend laying out a zone of about 5x7 to give yourself room to expand. Now click Utilities on the right side bar, then Carpentry Bench. Place one inside your Carpentry zone, then wait for it to be made. Congratulations! You can now make basic wooden items.

Now build a Wood Detailer once that is built you have a fully functioning carpentry. You may want to go ahead and build 2 additional Carpentry Bench and Wood Detailer that way you will not bottleneck yourself as easily when you issue more than one build command at a time.

Stonecraft

Make a Masonry zone near the Carpentry zone. They can even be touching, if you wish. Place a Mason's Bench inside. You may want to build a total of 3 Mason's Bench's as well.

Now that we have some raw materials, it's time to start ensuring our Townsfolk do not starve.

Building Farms

To start, we're going to need some Wheat. Look around the map and harvest about 10 wheat. Make sure you do not harvest close to the jungle or set a path that will take your Towsnfolk near it. Using the Till button in the bottom bar, till out a 5x5 zone. Once the land is tilled, you simply use the planting menu on the right side bar, select 'wheat', and then plant the individual rows to fill the areas. Of course, when you start out you will more than likely not have enough wheat to fill the whole 5x5 zone. Just plant what you can for now.

Bakery Time

Once you're done planting what you can, lay out a zone for a bakery. A 6x6 square will be ample room just starting off. Make sure to place it close to your farm while still leaving room for your farmland to expand. Now go to the 'Utilities' menu on the right bar and build a Baker's table, Baker's oven and Mill. As always, stick to building 3 of each. This will allow up to 3 Townsfolk to work on food production at a time for each step of the baking process.

While your Townsfolk are creating your bakery make sure to harvest and plant any wheat that grows. You will want to fill up the 5x5 square and subsequently till and plant another 5x5 making your starting farm 10x5. This will provide you with a total of 50 wheat plants giving you enough wheat to harvest and keep a steady supply to your Mill. Now let's take a look at the production menu.

Production vs Poorduction

The 'Production' menu is a powerful and deadly tool. If not handled properly your Townsfolk will be running in circles and starving to death while doing it. Let's take a moment to look at the 'food' 'gathering' 'Trees and plant's' menu. Listed here is every type of food your Townsfolk can gather. The plus/minus on the left tells your Townsfolk to gather so much now. The plus/minus on the right tells them to keep a certain number gathered. The number in the middle of the portrait tells you just how much you have of each item.

To begin making bread we will need to be able to gather a consistent amount of wheat at all times. Each flour takes 2 wheat. A common mistake new players make is to order 10 wheat harvested, 5 flour milled and 5 bread baked as soon as you finish planting. This is wrong. It creates a deficit in wheat harvesting. Your Townsfolk will be perpetually stuck grabbing every wheat they can while consuming every bread you can turn out.

To begin we will want to offset our wheat deficit by allowing the wheat fields to grow. Order your Townsfolk to harvest 10 wheat. Once they have, up the order to 20. Keep it at 20 for now. When you see your wheat fields grown and ready to harvest AND you have your 20 wheat harvested. Now you can order some flour milled. Remember, every time you start up a production line, whether it's wheat, sugar, trees, or even armor. Always get the base item fully stocked before moving on to the next phase. This ensures you can handle the production and do not over burden your Townsfolk.

Now start making 3 flour then 6 and eventually 10. Now that you can maintain 10 flour you are ready to begin actually baking! You will want to keep around 5 bread for your Townsfolk at a population of 11. When your population grows you may want to consider upping production, but for now you should be set.

Also note, if you add an apple or pear to make a pie you will get a 10% boost to your fill rate. What's fill rate you ask? Well every edible food in Towns has an amount of fillingness to it. You can see the fill rate if you hover over the icon for the selected food in the 'production' menu. Bread only gives a 75% fill. Apple and Pear pie gives 85%. You may consider planting an orchard and making pies. Just remember to get your harvest ready before you begin to bake. You may want to consider lowing your bread production too as this will ensure your Townsfolk eat the food that's more filling.

Meat Production

Now is as good a time as any to mention meat production. You may have noticed that cooked meat will yield a higher fill rate vs bread or pies. Don't worry about that for now. A common mistake is building animal farms before you have a stove built.

"But I can make a cooking fire?"

Yes you can, however that fire will die out and you will need more flint and wood to reignite it. Meanwhile, your animal farms will continue to produce new pets. Your Townsfolk will begin to feed them wheat. Animals eat wheat at an alarming rate. Your fields will be bare, your Townsfolk will begin starving and to top it all off they will actually feed a cow their last tuft of wheat before feeding themselves.

"So just wait for a stove first?"

You got it! Once a stove is built it requires no further attention. A cooking fire requires someone to build it every time it goes out. If you have your priorities set at default building utilities will be low on the list. If you've given a few other orders, it can take your Townsfolk quite a while to get around to lighting the fires. As of v10b the game does not count for you the amount of domesticated animals you own. They can and do wander off out of you Town area too; so best to wait until you know you can keep up with the birth rate at all times.

Caravans

Caravans are wonderful for early-game. Lay out a zone for your 'Market' and Traders will come to town at random intervals. Traders provide access to weapons, armor, food and ores. Each trader is different and will trade for different items. When a Trader comes to town the Trade/Caravan icon on the top bar will highlight red. To trade you simply choose what you want and what you are willing to part with to get it. Once you 'Confirm' the trade your Townsfolk will start gathering the items you selected to trade and give them to the Trader. After confirming the trade it cannot be edited. Once the Trader gets all the items he will leave the town. If you do not wish to trade (too broke eh) just wait and the trader will eventually leave the town making room for another Trader to drop by.

DO NOT EVER trade off any food or or items your Townsfolk need to survive. If you harvest and trade off all your wheat for a few steaks and a fish you will find your bread production halting. It will take time to get it back up and running and is not worth the price. Never sell off something your Townsfolk depend on.

Cash Crops

Certain crops in Towns seem to work best as money makers for traders. Sugar seems better to sell than bake with. Bamboo works as a cash crop. Wooden weapons and armor will fetch a good market price. It's a good idea to keep some or all of these items around as they will make for a quick buck.

Military

By now you have lost a few good men and women to the harshness of Normal Map life and may consider adding a few soldiers to your ranks. However in the early game this is frequently not ideal.

Your soldiers do not work. They are only around for the few moments when a civilian attacks a hostile. You will find that nearly all encounters are fought and won (or lost) by civilians before a soldier even makes it to help. When starting off it's best to just equip all your Townsfolk with wood swords and armor. Once you begin to dig underground you will want to consider adding a few soldiers, but for now just keep everyone working.

A good rule of thumb is not to have any soldiers until you have 20 townies, and then to add a soldier for every 5 townies you gain after that.

Bring Out Your Dead!

Death is an unnatural occurrence in Towns. Your Townsfolk never age or get sick. They do, however, get mortally wounded and die. When a Townsfolk dies their ghost may come back as a monster that will attack your other Townsfolk. How do prevent ghosts? Salt and burn the corpse! Or just lay them to rest with a grave. Graves are listed under the 'outdoor' 'decorations' on the right side menu. Each grave adds to your towns decoration so it's a win! Just lay out 1 or 2 plots in the beginning. That way whenever someone does die they will automatically be buried.

He's Not Quite Dead

Actually he's feeling much better! Wounded Townsfolk will not heal unless they have a Hospital zone to rest and recoup. Place a Medicine Cabinet found on the ride side menu under 'Utilities' and a bed for them to rest in. Townies will only go to the hospital if they are injured quite badly, and may pass it by even when it would really be best for them to go. Unfortunately there is no option to order townies to the hospital.

Immigration (Plenty of room in the Hotel California)

Many civilization building based games have you manage population through reproduction or cultural awareness. Sadly your Townsfolk will not reproduce. Apparently they are all eunuchs. The only way to increase your population is to give your Townsfolk a break. Immigration is dependent on happiness. Happiness is achieved when your Townsfolk can sit a spell and take in the breadth of their labor. Place some tables and chairs in your Market zone and they will gather and relax there. Once your average citizen's happiness reaches a certain level (seems to be around the 35% to 50% mark) new people will show up.

Important to note: No one new will show up unless you have given them a room to sleep in; so before you give your Townsfolk that first break go ahead and lay out a few extra rooms and a provide everyone with a bed.

But now I'm running out of trees...

Tree Farming

Tree farms are easy to build and maintain just a few things take note of:

Your Townsfolk will plant trees from bushes. A Tree (The white trunk with funny leaves) requires a bush and a Pine Tree a pine tree bush. Do not plant more than the amount of bushes safely scattered around your town. Your Townsfolk will wander all over the map, placing themselves in harms way to gather the required amount of bushes needed. Bushes will appear in forests; so don't chop down every tree around your town as it will provide you with the necessities to plant your farm.

You can maintain wood production from the 'materials' portion of the 'production' menu. If you are planting both Tree and Pine then you will need to maintain production for both tree types. Set your 'Chop planted Tree' and 'Chop planted Pine Tree' amount to the same value. This ensures you keep only that amount of total lumber; so setting both to 20 (good initial value) will ensure your Townsfolk keeps 20 logs on hand at all times.

Containers

Your production will be more efficient if you place containers in your zones. Containers allow your Townsfolk to stockpile items. Remember when we turned off all items in containers by default? Well now when we place containers we will have the choice to decide what goes into them. Place a Raw Materials Barrel or 3 in your Carpentry Zone. They are built through the right side menu. Once your Townsfolk have placed the new containers you can 'Manage' what to put in them. Right mouse click on one of your new containers it will show the 4 types of items this container will accept. Click on the 'Materials' icon and check the wood so it is no longer X'd out. Now your Townsfolk will begin to haul the chopped wood into the container.

Just remember, for every container you place you add more 'hauling' work to your Townsfolk work log. A wrong move many new players make is building 10 or more containers and not disabling them by default. Each container holds 10 items. If you placed 10 unrestricted containers your Townsfolk will have to haul 100 items. Everything from dirt, to bamboo, to bones will get hauled if it is lying on the ground anywhere on the map. If you only have 10 Townsfolk that's 10 hauling trips each person will make before they finish filling up all the new containers. This they have to juggle while harvesting and cooking food, sleeping, eating and any other orders you issue in between.

Dungeon Diving

So you've got a steady stream of food and wood. You've had a few immigrants move into your quaint little town and would like to explore the lower levels of the world. Precious minerals and ITEs await you, but how do you proceed with caution? Let someone else do the exploring and you mop up the mess, that's how!

Build yourself a Tavern zone and a few tavern rooms. Place a bed in each room and soon you'll have heroes arrive in your town! Heroes can be seen on the top menu just beside the Trade/Caravan icon. Heroes will search the dungeon and kill anything they feel like. I say feel like because even if a monster is in a heroes line of site (or 2 tiles away for that matter) a hero will not automatically engage. Heroes will not fight to the death either. They run away once they become mortally wounded. Monsters will continue to follow a hero once they flee from battle.

Now would be a great time to take the 1 or 2 soldiers you have and place them in group1. Then place a Barracks zone right at the entrance to your dungeon. Make sure to set out a few beds for your soldiers to sleep in. Now your soldiers will guard the entrance to the dungeon. Any monsters get out, they have to go through them first.

• Tips for a good Dungeon entrance:
  • It's good practice to place your dungeon entrance as close to center of map as you can comfortably achieve. This allows less walking in all directions.
  • If you are digging a ladder down and find there is an air block between you and the floor you can always have your Townsfolk place a scaffold to get them to the floor.

Walls

So, you've got your food chain set up, and your Townsfolk are in no immediate danger from hunger or the enemy. That's good. But it could be better. Select walls from the right side bar, and place either some wood or stone walls around your Carpentry, Bakery and Masonry zones. Make sure to leave gaps for doors! In order to build these walls you're going to need them to be at least two blocks high, which coincidentally is the height of a townie! After that you're going to need to build a roof for the building, this is where scaffolds comes into play. Place some scaffolding next to your walls, then build the roof, but to keep it from collapsing you have to build it from the walls, then start building in.

• PRO TIP - Overlapping a build order can cause your Townsfolk to glitch. When you overlap a build order you reassign that tile to a new Townsfolk. If a previous Townsfolk was carrying a wall designated for the corner of your building and a new build is issued and they will drop the wall and leave it.

Building above ground and surrounding your zones with walls allows your Townsfolk to craft and make things more efficiently, and makes them happier to do so.

Doors can be found in the Furniture menu. Make sure each building has at least 1 door. If you accidentally completely walled in a building, right click a single section and select "Destroy" to remove it.

Once you have enough rooms, decorate them with some Decorations. Stone statues and Potted plants are relatively easy to make. Decorations increase happiness, which attracts immigrants.

After that, give your Townsfolk a break. Let them stand around for a while. Let them eat and sleep in peace. Idling increases happiness too, and before you know it, more immigrants will be walking into your town.

So, that's it! You've mastered the basics and made a Town that can survive. At least, until a giant siege knocks it flat. But don't worry about that for now, just enjoy your Town!

But you aren't done yet. Try building a kitchen. Or mine for some iron! Or go fight in the dungeon. Or build bridges and wipe out the other side of the island! Farm and then butcher some cows! Farm mushrooms! Despite being an early build, there's quite a lot to do.