Appearance
Getting Started
This page covers your first hour: claiming land, what the starting village gives you, which buildings to put down first, how to set rations and tax, and what to work towards. It links to the deeper pages as it goes. Times are at world speed 1; a faster server shortens all of them.
The basics
- Register, name your lord and design your arms (see Accounts), then claim a site on the world map. Its biome decides what your village is good at.
- Build a woodcutter, a hovel and an apple orchard, close to the stockpile and granary.
- Raise rations to Extra once the orchard is running.
- Follow the steward's quests. The first one takes you past Cottar, and the first five to Freeman.
- Keep popularity above zero and keep building houses, so peasants keep arriving.
Claiming a site
Right after registering, the world map opens on "Choose your starting village" (step 3 of joining). The panel suggests one free site in each biome, the one nearest the middle of where other lords have settled (the middle of the realm if nobody has), with the goods that biome is best at and how many lords hold villages within 24 cells. Click a suggestion to fly to it, or click any free site on the map. You can name the village or keep the site's name. Only your first village is claimed this way; later ones are founded by sending a commander from a village you hold (see Military).
Each site belongs to one of seven biomes. For a first village, the biome mostly decides how easy food is. Greenvale Plains and Sunlit Vinelands have the most meadow and good food multipliers. Mountain Foothills are rich in stone and iron but make food at 0.6 to 0.7 of the normal rate. Every map, whatever the biome, has a starter grove of trees and a stone outcrop just outside the cleared centre, so the first buildings are always possible.
What you start with
| Buildings | Village Hall, Stockpile, Granary |
| Peasants | 8, in the hall's 8 beds |
| Wood / Stone / Apples / Gold | 250 / 60 / 120 / 300 |
| Rations / Ale / Tax | Normal / None / Low |
| Popularity | +4 |
The village is full on day one: 8 peasants, 8 beds. Nobody new arrives until you build housing.
First buildings
Two buildings go up at a time and up to ten can wait in the queue. Cancelling an unfinished building refunds all of it.
| Building | Cost | Build time | Workers | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Woodcutter's Hut | 15 wood | 1 min 30 s | 1 | within 5 tiles of trees |
| Hovel | 25 wood | 2 min | 0 | 8 more beds |
| Apple Orchard | 30 wood | 3 min | 1 | up to +30% on meadow |
| Stone Quarry | 40 wood | 5 min | 2 | on a stone tile |
| Well | 20 stone | 2 min | 0 | +1 popularity, up to 3 |
All five together cost 110 wood and 20 stone, which leaves 140 wood for more hovels. A woodcutter makes roughly 240 to 290 wood an hour depending on distance, so wood stops being short quickly. The stockpile holds 2,500 of each material.
Placement matters. Every trip, a worker walks from the building to the nearest store and back at 0.75 seconds per tile each way. Put the woodcutter and quarry near the stockpile (left of the hall) and the orchard near the granary (beside the hall). A woodcutter 10 tiles from the stockpile makes about 18% less than one right next to it. The full formula is on The Village.
Workers are handed out to buildings in the order you placed them. With 8 peasants, the woodcutter, orchard and quarry take 4 between them, so you have room for more workplaces before you run short.
Rations and tax
Popularity is the sum of rations, food variety, ale, tax and buildings. Above zero, with free beds, peasants arrive; below zero, they leave. The full list is on Popularity.
At the start, 8 peasants on Normal rations eat 8 apples an hour, so your 120 apples last 15 hours without an orchard. One orchard next to the granary makes about 210 apples an hour before biome and meadow bonuses, far more than a small village eats.
| Rations | Popularity | Apples per hour for 8 peasants |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | +4 | 8 |
| Extra | +8 | 12 |
| Double | +12 | 16 |
Once the orchard is running, Extra or Double rations cost little. The steward's fifth quest asks for Extra rations and popularity of at least 6.
Tax is gold per peasant per hour. Low is free (0.6 gold each); Normal pays 1.2 each for -4 popularity. A later quest asks for Normal tax while keeping popularity at 1 or more, which Extra rations alone can cover (8 - 4 = 4).
Arrivals per game hour are 1 + 0.4 * popularity while there are free beds. At popularity 8 that is 4.2 peasants an hour, so one hovel fills in about two hours.
The opening quests
The steward's main chain teaches one thing per quest. The first five each ask for a single step:
| Quest | Asks for | Renown |
|---|---|---|
| A Patch of Land | found a village | 25 |
| Timber for the Village | a woodcutter's hut | 30 |
| Roofs Over Heads | a hovel | 30 |
| Apples for the Granary | an apple orchard | 35 |
| Full Bellies | Extra rations and popularity 6 | 35 |
That is 155 Renown. Cottar needs only 5, so the first quest already makes you a Serf (15), and by the fifth you are a Freeman (100). Wolves can raid from Villein and bandits from Freeman, so expect the first raids early (see Battles). Several also pay resources or a random card. After that the chain moves on to scouting, stashes, tax, food variety, research, cards, the inn and population. See Quests.
What to aim for
- The early ranks. Cottar (rank 1) opens the inn, dairy farm, hunter's hut, fishing hut and scouts, and the opening quests carry you on to Freeman (rank 4). Popularity also earns Renown, multiplied by the village's Standing: the hall gives 3 and every 20 peasants 1 more, so a village of 20 peasants at +8 popularity earns
(3 + 1) x 8 x 0.05 = 1.6Renown an hour. Shrines, chapels and statues add Standing. See Ranks and Renown. - A second and third food. Each extra kind of food in the granary is +1 popularity. Dairy, hunter and fishing hut are the early options. Completing "A Varied Table" also unlocks the garden.
- Research. Start your first research early; most later buildings are locked behind it. See Research.
- Housing ahead of population. Peasants only arrive into free beds.
- An inn and ale. Ale adds up to +8 popularity, but needs the Brewing research for a brewery and a staffed inn to serve it.
- Cards. Most early quests hand out a card; cards give timed boosts to production, build speed, storage, Renown or popularity. See Cards and Crowns.
Interactions
- The Village: placement, the build queue, staffing, production and storage in full.
- Popularity: every factor, population growth and Renown.
- Biomes: what each biome is good and bad at.
- Quests, Research, Cards and Crowns: the next systems you meet.
- Weather: can shift popularity and production for a while.
- Feasts, Markets, Military, World Map: later in the game.
For maintainers
Source files:
server/src/village/sim.ts(foundVillage): starting resources, peasants and policy.server/src/content/index.ts: costs, build times and workers of the first buildings, ration and tax tables.server/src/features/quests/chain.ts: the opening quest chain and its Renown.server/src/tuning.ts: rank thresholds (RANK_THRESHOLDS, Cottar 5, Serf 15, Freeman 100), village Renown (renown), build slots.server/src/game.ts:claimSiteonly for the first village.
Numbers on this page that a change would invalidate: starting resources (250 / 60 / 120 / 300), 8 peasants, hall housing 8, costs and build times of the woodcutter, hovel, orchard, quarry and well, the first five quests' Renown (155 total), the thresholds of Cottar (5), Serf (15), Villein (40) and Freeman (100), the arrival formula 1 + 0.4 * popularity, and the village Renown formula (hall Standing 3, 20 peasants per Standing, rate 0.05).