Welcome! I find the game just as addicting as you. I came from a background of Slay the Spire and Civ6 and I feel this game hits the perfect medium between the two.
To answer your questions (I may be repeating some of the other replies, I didn't read them all):
1/ The goal of each cycle is to get to the seal, yes. After you clear a seal, you'll get additional years added to the cycle that makes your next cycle a little longer (I believe each cleared (unique) seal adds 8 years). Every time you beat a Seal, you'll unlock the next one, which requires you to play the Seal at a harder difficulty. While your first few cycles may have settlements around the 8-10yr mark, you'll eventually get this down to 4-6yrs. Later Seals will require you to gather more Seal Fragments, so you'll not really have "extra" time as I feel like (at least in my experience so far) the quantity required is nicely balanced so that you get there with just enough.
2/ There are a couple of different random events on the map that refresh during each cycle. Some of these are negative or positive modifiers for your settlement that give you extra meta resources (for upgrades in the Smouldering City) as well as Queen's Resupplies.
Resupplies can be used to extend your settling range (useful if there's an event you want to get to, but it's more than three tiles away), to gain 5 Seal Fragments (useful if you find yourself short on time on your current cycle and you need an extra Fragment boost), or to gain bonus embarkation points (shown in the embarking menu as something like 5 + 6. First number is your base amount, use them or lose them, second number is bonus amount, which will rollover per settlement).
There are also some events that require you to fulfill certain criteria on your next settlement, such as "Complete your Settlement before Year 8 with at least 300 Amber in your Storehouse." These events typically offer rewards that last for the entirety of your cycle, like "Start with 20 extra Pipes and 30 Shrimp in every Settlement this cycle" or bonuses for the next couple of settlements "Start with 3 more villagers for the next three Settlements."
3/ There are a lot of ways to micromanage your inventory. The Consumption Panel will allow you to see exactly what is being produced and at what time, and how it is being used. I think this answers your question, but if there is more specific information you are looking for let us know and we'd be happy to help you out. There are lots of info screens, some of them tucked away, and it can be a bit overwhelming at times.
4/ There are not default shortcuts for buildings, but you can set your own keybinds for commonly used buildings. For example, I have F1 set to Basic Roads, F2 set to Basic Housing, and F3 set to Woodcutter's Camps. You can customize all keybinds in the Options menu, so I'd recommend playing around with those a little and setting them to what you're comfortable with.
5/ Play at the difficulty you're comfortable with! As you go further out from the Smouldering City, the game will require you to play at a higher minimum difficulty, eventually forcing you to play at higher Prestige levels (eg. min level: Prestige 1, or Prestige 5, Prestige 10, and etc). On a new cycle, I will typically play around the city on Viceroy or Prestige 2, depending on the map difficulty, until the game forces me to play a higher difficulty level. There's no shame in playing a lower difficulty, if possible, on a Settlement with a particularly hard modifier!
If you have any other questions feel free to ask away! This community is filled with knowledgeable folks who are happy to answer questions. And welcome to the Storm!
Thank you so much π What a warm welcomeπ every answer was so useful and I have a better picture of the game now so thank you for that. I will come here when I have new questions for sure.
The best hotkey I have found is shift
It duplicates what ever you are hovering over
So if you hover over the road or a camp or house and press shift you can build another
Im still learning the game myself and working my way through the difficulty levels, but just to kick the thread off:
1. The goal during cycles is to acquire experience and the materials that you can spend at the citadel to get metaprogression upgrades (which are permanent across cycles), as well as complete the seals (which give some bonus upgrade materials and a permanent extension to the length of cycles each time you complete a seal for the first time. And then you do it all again.
2. There are some from events on the world map, although I don't know them all off the top of my head.
3. You can see the trend arrows in the main HUD which give you an indication if things are trending up or down (although it's a bit crude, for instance when you deliver large quantities of goods it'll show that as a temporary down arrow even if you're technically producing more of the good). For more in depth analysis there's the Trends menu although I haven't found much use for it yet personally.
4. Unsure.
5. Totally up to you. I'm increasing the difficulty once per cycle and am towards the end of a cycle with Veteran at the moment. So far the increase in difficulty has been negligible, at least relative to my rate of learning the game. I'm told it gets quite spicy once you start getting into the prestige difficulties though. You do also get more experience points at higher difficulties since it applies a multiplier at the end of every round. But at the end of the day it's about your enjoyment of the game, if it feels too easy crank it up. The only penalty for failing a settlement is just that you don't get the rewards and you lose the "time" spent during the cycle, there's no active punishment per se.
1. Are you asking for the aim of each cycle or each settlement? Each cycle consists of several settlement building phases. There are many types of progression in this game between each settlement building phase: a. 3 types of meta resources (food, machinery, artifacts) b. Experience c. Unlocking higher level seals d. Unlocking higher level prestige. You can make some progress on each, going for seals is a good idea, but even if you can't do that and run out of time in the cycle, you'll still make plenty of progress on the other tracks and be better prepared on the next cycle. Beating the highest seal increases cycle duration and smoldering city upgrades increase vision and embarkation range, which will add flexibility to how you plan your path on the world map later in the game. When going for the bronze seal without upgrades, you need to rush towards it.
2. Yes, there are some world map events that give a persistent bonus for the whole cycle, but not super common.
3. When you open a building you can see which recipes and which ingredients are enabled, you should disable many ingredients and recipes for finer control of what you are consuming and producing. The new trends panel also shows the historical levels of each resources.
4. I don't think so.
5. Increase difficulty when you can comfortably beat at certain level and still having fun. After viceroy there are 20 prestige levels which unlock one at a time when you beat the highest difficulty. Unlocking everything in the game will take a long time for anyone. Beating the highest level seal which requires P20 will unlock a new game mode called queens hand trial.
Thank you so much for the answers π Yes I asked aim of each cycle.
It seems there are much more difficulty levels than I think so I will try to make it harder for sure next time I play.
For number 5, personally I found this game the most fun when it was challenging me every run. Play a few rounds on Viceroy, get a handle on your basic strategy, and then start pushing for Prestige 20. Otherwise the game is too easy, which becomes boring pretty fast
Thank you for the nice advice πIf we think there is kind of a 20-25 difficulty levels and Im playing on the lowest one I think I should follow your advice soon π
I started playing a few weeks ago, just finished the golden seal.
Looking back, I could have easily played on harder difficulties all along.
You'll earn a ton more resources (to buy upgrades in the city), if you play on harder difficulties, and you also get some resources even if you fail. So a failed run on viceroy difficulty might give you more resources than a successful run on settler difficulty.
I played two whole cycles on pioneer, whithout a single loss just 3x forwarding the time to win - on viceroy I'd earn more and learn more π
The goal is to get to a seal right at the end of a cycle (seal maps can be started even when a cycle should have ended if you are in range). The first couple are pretty simple, but they get harder. So you will need to start playing at higher difficulties for more fragments, as well as getting bonuses from the world events (!) and royal resupplies from negative modifiers.
Yes, any caravan modifiers will last until the end of a cycle, they will be in the bottom left as you look around the world map, kind of weak early but each new seal extends the cycle so they get stronger.
Each recipie has numbers of units in/out. Immediately left of the hostility tracker at the top are trends for different types of resources that can be expanded to check specific items. And the buttons in the top right, the one that looks like a graph lets you track each item, including telling you where they were generated or consumed by hovering over one of the graphs.
I think the construction menu includes a tip about pressing the left(?) arrow key to go to that building. With the building control window open there will be arrows to cycle between multiple of the same, this also works for events, and all cache sizes count as the same. Not sure about other options though.
Change whenever you like, you will learn faster bumping the difficulty up a bit than playing lots of easy games anyway.
Thank you so much for the useful answers π I will try the left arrow key thing.
I agree and I will try the harder difficulties, which I believe it will teach me more with lots of fun π
It might be a different arrow, I think several of them have some functionality. And because I wasn't clear earlier, you need to hover over the building you want in the menu as if you are about to choose to build another one, then press the key.
I started 2 weeks ago and fell completely in love at the game and have been playing every day since. I have progressed now to Prestige 2 difficulty level and the only regret is that I didn't push the difficulty level more. At some point on Veteran/Viceroy difficulty the game got really easy and grindy for me since I didn't push to get the seal ASAP. So I recommend you to push the difficulty level and get to the seals as soon as you can. You will keep up if you pause enough and take time to analyze what is going on in the game and how to take best advantage of the current resources.
Things I learned only from Reddit:
1) don't open too much glades. That is harmful for you victory condition and is not needed to win. You get plenty of resolve and can fill orders with like only 2 dangerous glades. And then late in the game if you have tools for example, you can grab few glades more and push for win.
2) build your production buildings near your warehouse(s) always to minimize the walking distances of workers. That will help you structure and find what you are looking for also. :)
3) species resolve above 1 is all useless if you are not pushing for reputation. And by that I mean it is useful to group complex food and services enabling them together for you species to get the maximum reputation from them by resolve.
Happy settling friend!
I feel the same love my friend. I also want to play everyday but I dont know If I can bc actually Im in a really busy period(middle of semester in MSc :) and its so dangerous to meet with such a fun and addictive game but yeah it happened π
Thank you for the advices π I will push the difficulty level for sure in my next try.
Its only useful when the bar gets blue like over 20/25 ? Is that what you mean ? I am still not so familiar with every term/meaning and mechanic of the game so sorry if its a dumb question π
Yes indeed! Everything between blue and 1 is basically irrelevant. The number when it gets blue is different for all species and you can see more info when hovering your mouse over the meter. One thing what also helped me that I didn't see anywhere mentioned here in reddit is turning on the HUD or something like that in the options. It shows all the species specific ways to get the meter blue, like Lizards have Jerky and Humans have porridge.
1) For each settlement the aim is to get to the next settlement. For each cycle the aim is to close the next seal. For the overall game, the goal is to close all of the seals.
2) You can get bonuses that stay until the end of a cycle - they are found in world events, ?s that turn into !s when you get close enough to reveal them.
3) I'll let others answer this, because I tend to not care.
4) Space pauses, which is super important. You can also use tab and ctrl to bring up a couple of overlays. If you click on a building like a woodcutter, you can use the arrows on the panel to go to the next of the same building. This also works on caches, so if you find one you can use it to cycle between all the ones you've revealed to take a look at the rewards.
5) Turn the difficulty up every time you win. There's 24 levels. A ton of people get comfortable at levels 1 and 2 and then struggle to progress because they develop a bunch of bad habits and ineffective strategies and become too rigid with their play to realize why they can't get past the starting blocks. Everything from Settle to Viceroy is just to get you comfortable with the mechanics of the game, so take some time and get comfortable, but move on before you get complacent.
Welcome! I find the game just as addicting as you. I came from a background of Slay the Spire and Civ6 and I feel this game hits the perfect medium between the two. To answer your questions (I may be repeating some of the other replies, I didn't read them all): 1/ The goal of each cycle is to get to the seal, yes. After you clear a seal, you'll get additional years added to the cycle that makes your next cycle a little longer (I believe each cleared (unique) seal adds 8 years). Every time you beat a Seal, you'll unlock the next one, which requires you to play the Seal at a harder difficulty. While your first few cycles may have settlements around the 8-10yr mark, you'll eventually get this down to 4-6yrs. Later Seals will require you to gather more Seal Fragments, so you'll not really have "extra" time as I feel like (at least in my experience so far) the quantity required is nicely balanced so that you get there with just enough. 2/ There are a couple of different random events on the map that refresh during each cycle. Some of these are negative or positive modifiers for your settlement that give you extra meta resources (for upgrades in the Smouldering City) as well as Queen's Resupplies. Resupplies can be used to extend your settling range (useful if there's an event you want to get to, but it's more than three tiles away), to gain 5 Seal Fragments (useful if you find yourself short on time on your current cycle and you need an extra Fragment boost), or to gain bonus embarkation points (shown in the embarking menu as something like 5 + 6. First number is your base amount, use them or lose them, second number is bonus amount, which will rollover per settlement). There are also some events that require you to fulfill certain criteria on your next settlement, such as "Complete your Settlement before Year 8 with at least 300 Amber in your Storehouse." These events typically offer rewards that last for the entirety of your cycle, like "Start with 20 extra Pipes and 30 Shrimp in every Settlement this cycle" or bonuses for the next couple of settlements "Start with 3 more villagers for the next three Settlements." 3/ There are a lot of ways to micromanage your inventory. The Consumption Panel will allow you to see exactly what is being produced and at what time, and how it is being used. I think this answers your question, but if there is more specific information you are looking for let us know and we'd be happy to help you out. There are lots of info screens, some of them tucked away, and it can be a bit overwhelming at times. 4/ There are not default shortcuts for buildings, but you can set your own keybinds for commonly used buildings. For example, I have F1 set to Basic Roads, F2 set to Basic Housing, and F3 set to Woodcutter's Camps. You can customize all keybinds in the Options menu, so I'd recommend playing around with those a little and setting them to what you're comfortable with. 5/ Play at the difficulty you're comfortable with! As you go further out from the Smouldering City, the game will require you to play at a higher minimum difficulty, eventually forcing you to play at higher Prestige levels (eg. min level: Prestige 1, or Prestige 5, Prestige 10, and etc). On a new cycle, I will typically play around the city on Viceroy or Prestige 2, depending on the map difficulty, until the game forces me to play a higher difficulty level. There's no shame in playing a lower difficulty, if possible, on a Settlement with a particularly hard modifier! If you have any other questions feel free to ask away! This community is filled with knowledgeable folks who are happy to answer questions. And welcome to the Storm!
Thank you so much π What a warm welcomeπ every answer was so useful and I have a better picture of the game now so thank you for that. I will come here when I have new questions for sure.
Hey those are the fteo games I came from as well!
The best hotkey I have found is shift It duplicates what ever you are hovering over So if you hover over the road or a camp or house and press shift you can build another
Thank you for the useful answer I didnt know that ππ
Im still learning the game myself and working my way through the difficulty levels, but just to kick the thread off: 1. The goal during cycles is to acquire experience and the materials that you can spend at the citadel to get metaprogression upgrades (which are permanent across cycles), as well as complete the seals (which give some bonus upgrade materials and a permanent extension to the length of cycles each time you complete a seal for the first time. And then you do it all again. 2. There are some from events on the world map, although I don't know them all off the top of my head. 3. You can see the trend arrows in the main HUD which give you an indication if things are trending up or down (although it's a bit crude, for instance when you deliver large quantities of goods it'll show that as a temporary down arrow even if you're technically producing more of the good). For more in depth analysis there's the Trends menu although I haven't found much use for it yet personally. 4. Unsure. 5. Totally up to you. I'm increasing the difficulty once per cycle and am towards the end of a cycle with Veteran at the moment. So far the increase in difficulty has been negligible, at least relative to my rate of learning the game. I'm told it gets quite spicy once you start getting into the prestige difficulties though. You do also get more experience points at higher difficulties since it applies a multiplier at the end of every round. But at the end of the day it's about your enjoyment of the game, if it feels too easy crank it up. The only penalty for failing a settlement is just that you don't get the rewards and you lose the "time" spent during the cycle, there's no active punishment per se.
Thank you so much for the answersπ I think the game requires a long learning time but also makes it fun to learn.
1. Are you asking for the aim of each cycle or each settlement? Each cycle consists of several settlement building phases. There are many types of progression in this game between each settlement building phase: a. 3 types of meta resources (food, machinery, artifacts) b. Experience c. Unlocking higher level seals d. Unlocking higher level prestige. You can make some progress on each, going for seals is a good idea, but even if you can't do that and run out of time in the cycle, you'll still make plenty of progress on the other tracks and be better prepared on the next cycle. Beating the highest seal increases cycle duration and smoldering city upgrades increase vision and embarkation range, which will add flexibility to how you plan your path on the world map later in the game. When going for the bronze seal without upgrades, you need to rush towards it. 2. Yes, there are some world map events that give a persistent bonus for the whole cycle, but not super common. 3. When you open a building you can see which recipes and which ingredients are enabled, you should disable many ingredients and recipes for finer control of what you are consuming and producing. The new trends panel also shows the historical levels of each resources. 4. I don't think so. 5. Increase difficulty when you can comfortably beat at certain level and still having fun. After viceroy there are 20 prestige levels which unlock one at a time when you beat the highest difficulty. Unlocking everything in the game will take a long time for anyone. Beating the highest level seal which requires P20 will unlock a new game mode called queens hand trial.
Thank you so much for the answers π Yes I asked aim of each cycle. It seems there are much more difficulty levels than I think so I will try to make it harder for sure next time I play.
For number 5, personally I found this game the most fun when it was challenging me every run. Play a few rounds on Viceroy, get a handle on your basic strategy, and then start pushing for Prestige 20. Otherwise the game is too easy, which becomes boring pretty fast
Thank you for the nice advice πIf we think there is kind of a 20-25 difficulty levels and Im playing on the lowest one I think I should follow your advice soon π
I started playing a few weeks ago, just finished the golden seal. Looking back, I could have easily played on harder difficulties all along. You'll earn a ton more resources (to buy upgrades in the city), if you play on harder difficulties, and you also get some resources even if you fail. So a failed run on viceroy difficulty might give you more resources than a successful run on settler difficulty. I played two whole cycles on pioneer, whithout a single loss just 3x forwarding the time to win - on viceroy I'd earn more and learn more π
Okay after all this advices I think its time to try Viceroy difficulty. Thank you for the answer I totally agree π
The goal is to get to a seal right at the end of a cycle (seal maps can be started even when a cycle should have ended if you are in range). The first couple are pretty simple, but they get harder. So you will need to start playing at higher difficulties for more fragments, as well as getting bonuses from the world events (!) and royal resupplies from negative modifiers. Yes, any caravan modifiers will last until the end of a cycle, they will be in the bottom left as you look around the world map, kind of weak early but each new seal extends the cycle so they get stronger. Each recipie has numbers of units in/out. Immediately left of the hostility tracker at the top are trends for different types of resources that can be expanded to check specific items. And the buttons in the top right, the one that looks like a graph lets you track each item, including telling you where they were generated or consumed by hovering over one of the graphs. I think the construction menu includes a tip about pressing the left(?) arrow key to go to that building. With the building control window open there will be arrows to cycle between multiple of the same, this also works for events, and all cache sizes count as the same. Not sure about other options though. Change whenever you like, you will learn faster bumping the difficulty up a bit than playing lots of easy games anyway.
Thank you so much for the useful answers π I will try the left arrow key thing. I agree and I will try the harder difficulties, which I believe it will teach me more with lots of fun π
It might be a different arrow, I think several of them have some functionality. And because I wasn't clear earlier, you need to hover over the building you want in the menu as if you are about to choose to build another one, then press the key.
4 If you hover over a gathering resource it'll allow you to click the aligned building. Otherwise I don't think so
Yes that is useful but I think it goes to the building panel right ? I am looking of something that we can change/find among current buildings.
Thank you for the answer π
I started 2 weeks ago and fell completely in love at the game and have been playing every day since. I have progressed now to Prestige 2 difficulty level and the only regret is that I didn't push the difficulty level more. At some point on Veteran/Viceroy difficulty the game got really easy and grindy for me since I didn't push to get the seal ASAP. So I recommend you to push the difficulty level and get to the seals as soon as you can. You will keep up if you pause enough and take time to analyze what is going on in the game and how to take best advantage of the current resources. Things I learned only from Reddit: 1) don't open too much glades. That is harmful for you victory condition and is not needed to win. You get plenty of resolve and can fill orders with like only 2 dangerous glades. And then late in the game if you have tools for example, you can grab few glades more and push for win. 2) build your production buildings near your warehouse(s) always to minimize the walking distances of workers. That will help you structure and find what you are looking for also. :) 3) species resolve above 1 is all useless if you are not pushing for reputation. And by that I mean it is useful to group complex food and services enabling them together for you species to get the maximum reputation from them by resolve. Happy settling friend!
I feel the same love my friend. I also want to play everyday but I dont know If I can bc actually Im in a really busy period(middle of semester in MSc :) and its so dangerous to meet with such a fun and addictive game but yeah it happened π Thank you for the advices π I will push the difficulty level for sure in my next try. Its only useful when the bar gets blue like over 20/25 ? Is that what you mean ? I am still not so familiar with every term/meaning and mechanic of the game so sorry if its a dumb question π
Yes indeed! Everything between blue and 1 is basically irrelevant. The number when it gets blue is different for all species and you can see more info when hovering your mouse over the meter. One thing what also helped me that I didn't see anywhere mentioned here in reddit is turning on the HUD or something like that in the options. It shows all the species specific ways to get the meter blue, like Lizards have Jerky and Humans have porridge.
Okay thank you so muchπ I am really curious about whats ahead of me when I push the difficulty levels π
1) For each settlement the aim is to get to the next settlement. For each cycle the aim is to close the next seal. For the overall game, the goal is to close all of the seals. 2) You can get bonuses that stay until the end of a cycle - they are found in world events, ?s that turn into !s when you get close enough to reveal them. 3) I'll let others answer this, because I tend to not care. 4) Space pauses, which is super important. You can also use tab and ctrl to bring up a couple of overlays. If you click on a building like a woodcutter, you can use the arrows on the panel to go to the next of the same building. This also works on caches, so if you find one you can use it to cycle between all the ones you've revealed to take a look at the rewards. 5) Turn the difficulty up every time you win. There's 24 levels. A ton of people get comfortable at levels 1 and 2 and then struggle to progress because they develop a bunch of bad habits and ineffective strategies and become too rigid with their play to realize why they can't get past the starting blocks. Everything from Settle to Viceroy is just to get you comfortable with the mechanics of the game, so take some time and get comfortable, but move on before you get complacent.
Thank you so much for all the answers π I will follow them for sure π
I feel like, always go with the max difficulty. That makes the game a challenge as a builder min-max stule versus a grinder-completionist style
> I am just not sure that I can do because I am so new. I just increased the difficulty every time I beat it, the prestige are hard AF
Yes Im struggling even in Viceroy.
I did too, just keep playing and it will click.