Survive & Build
Make it through the night. Then make it home.
Warmth before everything. Then a fire, a camp, a settlement, and people who stay.
Survive
Warmth, hunger, wounds
Health, resolve, warmth and breath, with hunger, thirst and your lamp fuel on the side.
The cold drains you faster in the Deep Winter and on high ground. Eat and drink, and food spoils: slowly in the cold, quickly in summer. Cuts and bites bleed until you dress them; sickness and injuries show on an anatomical card. Clothing matters.
Your lantern goes off, dim or bright. Bright light holds the horrors at its edge, and burns fuel. A red ring warns before a prowler lunges.
- Four difficulties: Hearth, The Road, The Long Night, and One Life (death ends the journey; the lantern may pass to a settler)
- Four origins: the Trapper, the Ferryman, the Smith and the Scribe, each with their own kit and knack
- Tune the cold, hunger, foes, yields and raids yourself
Fight
What hunts you
Staff strikes, a hunting bow, a quick sidestep and a brace that parries a blow and staggers the foe. Or switch on auto-fight and answer whoever hits you.
There are bandit camps and horror dens in the wilds, raids on your settlements, seasonal giants, and bosses like the Spine Lord and the Ash Giant. Your people, and friendly villagers, come to each other’s defence.
Craft
206 recipes
Knap a stone axe from 3 timber and 2 stone. Then everything else.
Crafting (C) lists every recipe: what you can make now, what is missing and where. Pin one and the game counts what you still need on screen. Stations run from the workbench and field forge to the smithy, glass furnace and foundry; tools wear, and tiers matter.
Camp
The moving camp
Pitch it away from the road each evening (B) and strike it each morning. Your company raises it together, piece by piece: pegs and poles, frame, canvas and hides, ropes, contents. More hands, faster.
It grows as you do: a lean-to becomes a hide tent and then a canvas wall tent; a fire ring becomes a stone hearth; stakes become a palisade screen. Arrange it in the camp editor, and it pitches the same way every night. Sleep in it to skip to dawn when no foes are near.
Build
The homestead and settlements
Found a settlement from a pitched camp and give it a name; its hearth and shelter become the first permanent buildings, and its territory grows as you build. One base per region.
Build and farm inside it (G): housing and production, crafting stations and storage, farming and animals, defence and civic buildings, and furniture to fill them. Walls, palisades, gates, gatehouses and towers are for bases only.
- 24 buildings added in 1.8.1 alone: watermill, smithy, brewhouse, ropewalk, ice house, root cellar, bell tower, bathhouse, market hall, coaching inn, longhouse and more
- Every one can be built, and does something
Crew
People who decide for themselves
Recruit settlers along the road: cooks, farmers, foresters, hunters, smiths and more. Choose who travels with the camp and who stays at a base, and change it at any time.
Each of them weighs seven needs, a personality and their bonds, and picks what to do. Roles emerge from the work they do, or you assign them. Open Mission Control (Shift+N) for everyone in your settlements: what they are doing and why, work priorities, projects, standing orders ("keep 40 planks") and the chronicle.
Grow
Farming and animals
Sow winter rye, red turnips and pale flax in crop beds; water them and fertilise for a better yield. Grind flour, bake bread, brew and preserve; ice houses and root cellars slow the spoil.
Tame animals and raise them: fourteen species give their own produce, on their own clocks. Pens hold four, byres six and stables eight.
The train
Haulage is the progression
Everything your camp becomes has to be moved every morning. Start with what fits on your back; then a hand-sledge, a handcart, hounds, pack beasts, wagons and freight sledges. Each carrier adds to one shared train stash, so what everyone gathers on the march flows into it.
Carriers eat, tire and can be hunted at night, and a bigger caravan draws more eyes. At the far end of the ladder: a salt mammoth’s howdah, and the landships.