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 that this is a work-in-progress so if you have any feedback please contribute to the discussion on this wiki and join the community discord for more tips + feedback.
Creating Map
See World Generation page for more advanced details
You can leave default Trailblazer settings for a good experience of all the game has to offer, although it is advised to change the map type to lowland lakes/plains for your first run as other map modes provide prohibitively uneven terrain or are lacking in resources.
Placing your Town Center
You will now need to place your Town Center before you can do anything else, note that the center itself offers little use besides safety during raids + some desirability so its not critical exactly where you place it, as long as the general area is satisfactory.
- Press f4 to toggle between different resource views (switch to quantity view)
- Press f to toggle the fertility view
Things to look out for:
Animal threats (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 an can attack your villagers, but can be hunted for food (not automatically)
Neutral animals
- 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
- Flat land will make it significantly easier to expand your settlement (you will be able to flatten land somewhat but it is work intensive.
- Fertile Land. Find this using the fertility view (f). Settling near high fertility land will make farming easier (but its not critical)
Strategic resources
- 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 trees so its not strictly necessary
- Iron Deposit. You will be able to mine these to produce iron ore, which will be more important later on.
Take note of where you can find these strategic resources before you place your settlement, as they will disappear into Fog of war.
Place your town center in a spot that has lots of flat terrain around it (20-30 squares) as that will make settlement expansion easier later. Once it is placed the rest of the map will disappear into the fog of war and the progression of time will begin.
Early Settlement Guide (Tier 1)
This stage will involve you setting up the basic food supply for your settlement, and the gathering/processing of basic resources required for a self-sustaining settlement. Do not worry too much about placement of buildings at this stage as you can move them around later without over-disrupting your settlement production.
Cut down 4-8 tress as the town center is being built. Press H to bring up the harvesting interface, 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)
Avoid harvesting trees and bush around wildlife, as this will prevent them from regenerating
Place a Firewood Splitter to begin stockpiling firewood (which is processed from raw logs). This should be somewhere near a large body of trees with lots of space for other production buildings
Firewood is a basic survival requirement of your citizens throughout the game, as they will need it to heat their homes during winter. In addition firewood is used in the production process of many buildings (particularly important for smokehouses in the early game). You will always want to monitor your firewood reserves and adjust the amount of workers employer making firewood production to ensure you keep if with demand as your settlement grows
Basic Food Production
Place 2-3 Hunter Cabins/Fishing Shacks (depending on if you have more herds/enhanced fishing spots nearby. Also place down 1-2 Forager Shacks to supplement food/ start collecting things like willow and herbs
Keep in mind for all these gathering buildings you do NOT need to place them physically on/close to the herds as their work area can be moved without moving the building itself
Place down a Smokehouse near your fishing shacks/hunter cabins
Note that smokehouses will attempt by default to process an equal ratio of both fish and meat, so if your hunter cabins are far away from your fishing shacks it might make sense to build two separate smokehouses and switch one to process fish only and the other meat (see smokehouse for more details)
As your settlement grows over time
Monitor how many months of food you have left as your population grows (generally want to have at least 4-6 months available that wont spoil). Increase your food production if it is steadily dropping (for now Place more hunter cabins if you have untapped herds/fishing cabins if you have more enhanced fishing spots. A good rule of thumb is a that each settler will consume ~35-40 a year, a fully efficient hunter will generate ~400 meat a year, and a fishing shack 250-350 fish a year.
Basic Housing
Place down 6 Shelters somewhere further away from your resource collection areas (i.e. away from your smokehouses and firewood splitters)
Due to how Desirability works and service/entertainment buildings having an effective radius, you will want to concentrate your buildings in their own residential district. Don't pack them too closely as you want to leave lots of space for parks + desirability buildings. See Village Layout Strategy for more details.
Place a Well near your shelters (as well as your gathering district if you have many buildings there). Wells are necessary for general consumptions (as important as food), as well as in production lines of things like tanneries. They also are necessary to put out fires so its not a bad idea to make sure there are wells covering your entire settlement
(you can press I to bring of moisture overlay to see good places to place your wells)
As your settlement grows over time
- Build more houses as you get close to your occupation limit - it will generally not grow past the limit unless there is additional space available
- Keep harvesting more trees/stone.
Basic Amenity Production
As resources and available population allows (with at least 6 labourers spare for resource collection), you can start setting up the production of basic tools/clothing for your settlers.
Near your hunters:
- Build a Cobbler Shop, this will turn your hides into shoes for your citizen (and can be sold to merchants)
- Build a Tannery, this will turn your hides into shoes for your citizen (and can be sold to merchants)
Near your stockpile/firewood production area:
- Build a Fletcher Building, which will produce arrows and bows for your hunters and later guards
Near your foragers/storage area:
- Build a Basket Shop, which will turn the willow gathered by your foragers into baskets for your laborers and builders
Early Logistics + Storage
Build a Storehouse + 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.
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.
Build a Stockyard and a Saw Pit near a heavily wooded area. You can also move your firewood splitter here, as you'll want this to form your production district (firewood is necessary for a lot of things) so try to find a wooded area relatively near clay/sand/coal
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 your early defences.
Eventually your town center will be able to upgrade (once you reach 30 pop, and have built a market), which you can upgrade using stone and planks
Mid Settlement Guide (Tier 2)
This is the longest and arguably the most challenging part of the game, as you will begin to see enemy raids and see stress on your food supply. It also has the most building options that will involve you setting up multiple production lines for different 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 (at this point it is unadvisable to move them as they run the risk of degrading)
Settlement Defence
You will now need to build some defences. Construct 2 Towers near your town center/storehouse and surround the compound with Wooden 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 fort. This + 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 defences 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
As a general guide, 4-5 hunters/fisheries (with a smokehouse) and a firewood cutter will support a pop of 40-50 people
Industry and Trade
Build a Trading Post. This will allow you to see your surplus goods and buy things you are lacking (and eventually some heavy tools which will let you start your advanced industries).
Build a Soap Shop to turn your tallow and herbs into soap. This will address your citizens sanitary needs and you can sell the surplus for good profit to merchants
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.
Start Farming (more detailed guide available there). This will provide large amounts of sustainable and varied food, as well as things like Flax that can be turned into Clothes. Eventually you can grow Wheat to turn into bread, which is highly productive and the base grain is resistant to spoilage when kept in a Granary
You will want to keep watch for each visiting merchant and purchase a few sets of Heavy Tools when available, as they are necessary for the metal industry (which is required to make your own heavy tools) and in breadmaking for the construction of a Mill.
Onwards to Victory
You now have a thriving settlement, and the its future is up to you! Keep growing your settlement and upgrading your buildings. Keep up with your food production, defences, gold economy and meet your citizens demands for luxury
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
Check out the Tips and Tricks page for more helpful info
Good Luck!