Beginner's Guide

Welcome to Farthest Frontier! This guide will detail how to create a stable start for your settlement and set you up for success.

Please note, this guide is a work-in-progress -- If you have any feedback or see something that's incorrect, either create an account and start editing or join the community Discord to chat with the wiki team directly and suggest changes.

A well-defended and supplied early settlement

Game operation

Farthest Frontier is only available to be played on a desktop computer, and is played with a keyboard and mouse (with some overlap between the two, but does require both). There is a lot of information presented on the screen at any given time, and there are also several popup dialog boxes the game uses, some solicited and others unsolicited.

A high-level description can be found in the official game guide.

If you're brand new to the game, enjoy an introduction to game operation, which in turn points you to articles such as Default & Hidden Controls, Heads-up display and even Category:Dialog boxes for more detailed information.

Creating Map

You can leave default Trailblazer settings for a good experience of all the game has to offer, though it is advised to keep the map biome type as Idyllic Valley or switch to lowland lakes/plains for your first run.

Other map biomes come with sizeable setbacks for new players like uneven terrain or intentionally limited resources.

Placing your Town Center

Upon loading into a new map, an initial area will be scouted by the villagers, revealing strategic information about resources and climate that will be helpful in choosing a settlement site.

The player will need to place the Town Center before anything else can be done. While anywhere within the initially explored area is valid as a starting placement, this decision cannot be easily un-done.

It is in the player's interest to do some further scouting of the visible area and identify potential good sites to begin building their settlement. Once a Town Center is placed, the explored area is hidden behind 'fog of war' so making a mental note of critical resources is suggested prior to placement.

Selection Factors

Hostile Animals (avoid)

Wolf dens will destroy your villagers in the early game if you settle close to them, so try to steer clear

Boars will turn aggressive and will attack your villagers, but can be hunted for food (not automatically)

Neutral Animals (Nice to have)

Deer herds, which are an excellent early game of food and will provide important resources like hides and tallow.

Enhanced Shoals of fish. While fish can be gathered around any water body, enhanced fishing spots provide a 50% bonus, which makes them on par with deer herds.

Land Considerations (preferred)

Flat land (most helpful) will make it significantly easier to expand your settlement. The Flatten Land tool (T) may be used, but it is high labor cost.

Fertile land using the fertility view (F). Settling near high fertility land will make farming easier. More details below in food production.
Irrigation Quality affects likelihood/severity of droughts that can damage your crop yields and well replenishment rates for your village. While not critical in early game, it can negatively impact your settlement in the long run
Bodies of Water provide opportunities for fishing as a food source, as well as a higher chance for several critical early resources (Willow, Medicinal Roots, Blueberry Bushes) to spawn.

Strategic resources (preferred)

Clay deposit (most helpful). This will allow you to produce pottery and with brickmaking is important for construction/building upgrades
Coal Deposit. This will allow you to mine Coal which is necessary for metal/brick/glass industries. You can substitute coal with Charcoal made from Firewood so this is not immediately necessary
Iron Deposit. You will be able to mine these to produce iron ore, which will be more important later.

Site Assessment Hotkeys

Press F4 to toggle between different resource views (switch to see quantity of resource deposits)
Press F to toggle the fertility view
Press I to toggle the irrigation/moisture overlay

NOTE: Exact position of the town center itself isn't critical, it has limited utility beyond safety during raids + a minor desirability boost + a quick-recall point for the camera with hotkey Z, so the primary goal should be finding a generally satisfactory area to begin your settlement.

Early Settlement Guide (Tier 1)

This stage involves setting up basic food supply for a settlement and providing the techniques for gathering/processing of resources required for a self-sustaining settlement. Strict placement of buildings isn't critical at this stage as most buildings can be moved later without disruption of settlement production.

Harvesting menu where you select what you want to be included/removed from selection

1. Cut down 4-8 trees as the town center is being built.

Press H to bring up the harvesting interface, where you can enable/disable what you want to harvest. Drag to select all checked resources for harvest (you can hold shift and drag to unselect)

Until Work camps are available to automate this process, the player will continue to have to mark Trees/Stones in order to gather the necessary resources for buildings

NOTE: While trees in undeveloped terrain will grow back over time, avoid harvesting trees and bush around wildlife as this will prevent the wildlife from regenerating quickly.

2. Place a Firewood Splitter to begin processing raw Logs into Firewood. Firewood Splitters should be somewhere near a large body of trees to minimize travel time, leaving plenty of space for other production buildings

Firewood is a basic survival requirement of your villagers throughout the game, as they will need it to heat their homes during winter. Firewood is also used in the production process of many buildings, with Smokehouses being a prominent early-game example.

Always monitor your firewood reserves and adjust the amount of workers employed making firewood production to ensure you keep up with demand as your settlement grows. Firewood deficits can lead to workplace shutdowns, cold-related injuries, and potential mass-death events during the coldest parts of Winter.

Basic Housing

1. Place 6 Shelters somewhere away from undesirable buildings such as Smokehouses and Firewood Splitters.

Due to how Desirability (Hotkey: G) works, it's recommended to concentrate your buildings in their own residential district(s) to get the largest benefit from Amenities and desirable buildings. Avoid building large blocks of Shelters too closely together as the Player will need plenty of space for parks and desirability buildings later on.

NOTE: See City Layouts for more advanced examples and ideas.

2. Place a Well near your shelters (press I for moisture overlay) and gathering district if you have many buildings there. Wells...

are necessary for providing villagers a clean source of drinking water (just as important as food).
provide a slight desirability boost to nearby shelters.
feed into production lines for buildings like Tanneries.
provide a ready source of water to put out building fires.

Given the broad utility of wells along with minimal cost and no employment requirements, it's a good idea to ensure your settlement has plenty of well coverage.

Next steps

Continue to build more Shelters as you get close to your occupancy limit.
- Your population will not increase via births/immigration without Shelter capacity.

Continue harvesting trees and stone to supply the raw building materials needed for expansion

Food Production - Hunting & Gathering

1. Place 2 or 3 Hunter Cabins/Fishing Shacks depending if you have more deer herds or enhanced fishing spots nearby.

While both buildings are reliable early-game food producers, Hunter cabins have the additional benefit of being an early source for Hides and Tallow, critical resources for later development.

These buildings do not need to be placed directly on the water/deer herds, as their work areas can be moved after construction is finished. Try moving work areas on both buildings to optimize their yields.

NOTE: Fish and Wildlife availability is based on the size of the body of water/tree cover of the Deer resource node. While overfishing/overhunting is possible, they will replenish over time!

2. Place a Smokehouse near your fishing shacks/hunter cabins

Fish and Meat will spoil quickly upon collection, lasting only 2 and 3 months respectively. To prevent waste, a Smokehouse converts these foods to their smoked equivalents, increasing their shelf-life to 24 months!

Smokehouses process an equal ratio of smoked fish and smoked meat by default, which can lead to smokehouse workers traveling significant distances to stay true to this ratio.

As settlements expand it's preferable to build two separate smokehouses, sited near either Fishing Shacks or Hunter Cabins and adjust production sliders to dedicate the Smokehouse exclusively to production of either Smoked Fish or Smoked Meat (see smokehouse page for more details).

3. Place 1-2 Forager Shacks to supplement food and start collecting resources like Willow, Berries, Medicinal Roots and Herbs.

Throughout the year, different plants can be foraged:

Herbs, Medicinal Roots, Greens and Berries replenish in the spring/summer
Hawthorne and Nuts replenish in the Fall
Mushrooms and Eggs replenish sporadically but primarily in Fall
Most forageables perish in Winter if not collected and will refill the next year

NOTE: Gathering buildings do NOT need to be placed physically on/close to the vegetation and wildlife since their work areas can be moved without moving the building itself at any time. This is a good strategy to maximize potential output of your Forager Shacks.

Early Logistics + Storage

1. Build a Stockyard and Saw Pit near a heavily wooded area. You can also move your firewood splitter here if they aren't already, as you'll want this to form your production district (firewood is necessary for a lot of things).

Try to find a nearby wooded area relatively near clay/sand/coal if possible to minimize travel.

2. Build a Storehouse and Root Cellar near your town center, you'll want to enclose these off with walls/towers shortly so keep them close together. An example of a space efficient build is the early game fort (see picture at right).

These buildings will be the primary target for raiders so you want to make sure they will be easy to defend. You will also want to make sure they are relatively close to your housing area so that your market and settlers have easy access to food and supplies.

3. Build a Market in your residential district. You will want to build homes around its effective radius (and build more markets and more houses as your settlement grows). The Market will provide a small but steady stream of gold from selling supplies to your citizens that will fund early defenses.

Eventually your Town Center will be able to upgrade once you reach 30 population, have 8 completed shelters and have built a Market. This is your path to Tier 2 settlement development but there's more groundwork to be laid before we proceed.

Basic Amenity Production

As resources and available population allows (with at least 6 laborers spare for resource collection), you can bring production of basic goods and clothing for your villagers.

Near your hunters:

Build a Cobbler Shop, this will turn your hides into shoes for your citizen, improving movements speed and avoiding maladies.
Build a Tannery, this will turn your hides into coats for your citizens, reducing risk of injury during animal attacks.

Near your stockpile/firewood production area:

Build a Fletcher Building, which produces bows and arrows for your hunters

Near your foragers and storage area:

Build a Basket Shop, which converts the willow gathered by your foragers into baskets, increasing carry capacity for your villagers when equipped

Food Production - Agriculture & Beyond

Start your crops early as possible. Press the F key to bring up the Fertility overlay, and find a decently fertile and flat spot to put 1 field down. A small size of 5x5 or 5x6 (which only takes 1 farmer) is enough to get you started.

NOTE: Labor cost for "building" a field is quite high, and can take several years to complete.

Once a field has been completed, the first few years will involve preparation and building soil fertility to the point where fields will have appreciable crop yields for your settlement.

Suggestions:

If the ground is rocky and weedy, start with doing field maintenance
If it's early spring and your weeds and rocks are under control, start with some peas
If it's late spring and early summer grow some beans
If your fertility is low and weeds are high, start your first year prepping the soil by doing Maintenace-Clover-Maintenance

Next steps:

Pause the game for a moment at the end of each fall and when winter starts. Use this time to review your field and make any adjustments before next spring begins:

If fertility is below 60% - grow clover
If weeds and/or rocks are still high - more maintenance
If fertility is high and rocks/weeds are low, stop and read the in-depth Farming Guide to prepare your Settlement as you grow

Further Steps:

Monitor how many months of food you have left as your population grows. Six months of available food storage without spoiling is a good target.
Increase your food production if it is steadily dropping.
- Place more hunter cabins if you have untapped deer and boar, and fishing cabins if you have more enhanced fishing spots
- A good rule of thumb is each villager consumes ~35-40 a year
- An efficient hunter will generate ~400 meat a year, and a fishing shack 250-350 fish a year

Congratulations, if you have reached this point you are now ready to move on to Tier 2!

Mid Settlement Guide (Tier 2)

This is the longest and arguably the most challenging part of the game as enemy raids become frequent and stress on your food supply rises.

Tier 2 also introduces the most building options, which require multiple production lines for an array of basic and luxury goods.

This is also where the layout of your settlement will start to take solid shape, as your population grows and shelters begin to upgrade

Settlement Defense

You will now need to build some defenses. Construct 2 Lookout Towers near your town center and storehouse and surround the compound with Palisade Walls to build a makeshift motte fort.

Refer to the example Early game fort build for layout guidance. Once the towers are complete, garrison both with an additional villager to bring both towers to 2/2 employment

NOTE: eventually you will get attacked by raiders. Once you get the notification, pause the game. Toggle the villager garrison button (bell) in your town center to make all villagers run to your Town Center, which will act like a lookout tower when occupied and shoot arrows at hostile invaders.

The garrisoned Town Center + your 2 towers will be able to hold back most raids till later on.

As the game progress you will need to build additional towers and eventually build walls to surround the rest of your settlement.

Be careful with your garrisoning costs as each tower costs 5 gold a month in upkeep.

Now that you have your defenses built you should be relatively safe from material threats for a good while, but you are still at risk of running out of food/firewood so always keeps these monitored.

For reference, a villager consumes 2 units of food monthly and 24 annually. A production balance preferred by several players to avoid famines is 40 food per villager per year, leading us into our next section...

Industry and Trade

Build a Trading Post. This will allow you to sell surplus goods and buy things you are lacking -- a key goal in this tier is to purchase heavy tools which enables construction of advanced industry buildings.

Build a Soap Shop to turn your tallow and herbs into soap. Access to Soap addresses the sanitary needs of your citizens, reducing spread of contagious maladies and providing a valuable commodity for trade when a surplus is available.

Start a secondary industry (or two) to improve the lives of your citizens and enable you to sell goods for gold to Traders (Merchant), depending on the resources available to you you can choose between many different industries at this point:

If you have a clay deposit nearby you can build a Clay Pit and Potter Building to produce Pottery.

You can place Apiaries and Candle Shops to make Candles.

Expand Farming Operations (see link for extended guide). This will provide large amounts of sustainable and varied food, a key requirement for housing upgrades. Farms also produce critical crops like Flax that can be turned into Clothes.

Once basic food variety needs are met and Heavy Tools are acquired, consider growing a Grain (Wheat/Rye/Buckwheat) to turn into bread. Conversion rates make Bread a cheap and highly productive foodstuff and grain is highly resistant to spoilage when kept in a Granary.

You should watch for each visiting merchant (usually early spring) and purchase a few sets of Heavy Tools when available. These are necessary for the metal industry, which in turn enables making your own heavy tools and in the construction of a Windmill for breadmaking.

Onwards to Victory (Tier 3 and Tier 4)

You now have a thriving settlement, its future is up to you! Keep growing your food production, defenses, and income in lockstep with your citizens demands for greater luxury and your settlement will one day reach the 1000 resident limit... provided your computer hardware can keep up with so many busy villagers!

Some good long term goals to aim for:

Get your town center to T3, and eventually to T4 to unlock new buildings and upgrades

Start heavy industries:
- Iron ore can be smelted with coal/charcoal into iron ingots which can be forged into weapons, armour, and are necessary for many buildings
- Gold ore can be smelted with coal/charcoal into gold ingots for huge amounts of money
- Brickmaking is necessary for many buildings/upgrades
Grow your settlement's population and fulfil your settlers increasingly complex demands to upgrade their dwellings, which will generate additional tax income
Establish a steady and long-lasting food supply.
- Growing Grain (Wheat/Rye/Buckwheat) for the purpose of Breadmaking. Grain will last for years in a Granary and can be milled/baked by a Windmill and Bakery respectively into large amounts of bread, which will feed large populations
- Raise Livestock for Meat, Hides, Tallow and Cheesemaking.
  - When fed grain or root vegetables and grazed on pasture, Livestock can be milked, which itself can be turned into Cheese - which is a food with the highest shelf-life in the game at 36 months.
  - The supplementary Meat, Hide and Tallow supplied by slaughtered cattle vastly outpaces hunter production, making scarcity of these resources a thing of the past once larger herds are established.
Provide Entertainment To Your Settlement
- Despite large up-front costs (and lengthy supply-chains in the case of pubs) Theaters and Pubs meet the entertainment needs of your villagers, reducing the risk of emigration in larger settlements even during adversity
- While Pubs do generate revenue based on sale of Beer, this also increases risk of random (potentially deadly) brawls between villagers.
  - It is strongly recommended to direct any especially violent villagers away from town centers to allow them time to sober up as body counts from brawls often exceed that of invading armies.
Hire Professional Soldiers by building a Barracks.
- Soldiers are incredibly effective at fighting raider forces
- Soldiers can be instrumental in clearing any problematic wolf dens near your city.

Onward, Mayor! Good Luck and Have Fun!

Additional References