Let's Play – Episode 02

You can find episode 2 of my Let's Play Timber & Stone series here on YouTube. In this episode I start building the foundation for my castle out on the lake. The video ends with me finally starting to build the foundation for my castle on the lake. For the tutorial side, I discuss the following items:

• Clearing Timber
• Encumbrance Issues
• Storage Caches
• How Much Food is Enough?
• Detecting Enemy Mobs
• Pickaxe Tiers
• Micromanaging Mining
• Micromanaging Building
• Dusk Arrives
• Inventory Management
• Don't Guess – Look!
• When to Define the Hall
• A Hall With No Roads
• Expanding the Farm
• Balancing Labor

Clearing Timber

In general you want to simply have the wood choppers cut the trees down to harvest the timber, leaving the stumps so that the trees can regrow. However, there are times in which you want to clear-cut an area, ensuring that the trees do not grow back. In order to accomplish that, you need to remove the stumps by left-clicking on them and selecting Remove Stump from the menu. Note that removing stumps does gain you wood.

Clear-cutting allows you to have a clean space for building, but also is useful if you want to have trees away from your walls and buildings. This allows for clear fields of fire for your archers and reduces the spread of fire, which is the biggest danger to your settlement's structures and farms. I will go into more detail about wildfires in a future episode. Let's just leave it for now that I have had to reset games because I ignored wildfires for too long!

Encumbrance Issues

As I showed in episode 1, I lower the encumbrance of my settlers at the start of the game. The following table shows the values I use, by profession, and the reasons.

Profession	Encumbrance	Reason
Miner	8	The miner stays relatively close to the camp and, of all the gatherers, has to carry the heaviest materials. By keeping their encumbrance relatively high you ensure that they can collect enough material to warrant walking back to the wagon to unload, but not so high that they will be slowed when carrying a full load.
Wood Chopper	6	The wood chopper moves out into the field, eventually straying away from the camp as they gather more and more timber. Further, it takes a wood chopper longer to gather their resources (as compared to a miner), so to ensure that the carpenter and stone mason has sufficient materials to keep busy, lowering the wood chopper's encumbrance keeps the materials flowing.
Farmer	6	The farmer generally stays close to camp, unless you have designated your farm away from it (which is generally not a good idea) and their tools and materials (food and seeds) are very light. To ensure that they do not lose a lot of materials, should they die from an unexpected attack, keep their encumbrance low. Further, this help reduce seed production (see below).
Forager	6	The forager has one of the most dangerous jobs of all as they frequently stray far afield of the camp. Their tools and resources (food, hair, hides, fat, and wool) are very light, so they can carry a tremendous amount of resources when fully encumbered. To ensure that the loss is minimized, reducing the encumbrance will force them to unload more frequently. That does mean that they will collect less during the course of the day, as they make more trips back to camp, but that is actually not a bad thing.
Crafters	12	The crafting professions – builder, carpenter, stone mason, and blacksmith – are almost always at camp. Further, other than builders, they rarely carry more than one tool and one resource at a time, so being slowed by being over-encumbered is rare. Rather than lowering it and trying to remember to raise it if you switch them to building, it is simpler to keep their encumbrance high.

After you have built up enough surplus of tools (about five of each of hunting knife, hammer, tongs, axe, pickaxe, and hoe) you can increase the encumbrance levels of some of those professions. I raise the miners from 8 to 10 and the wood choppers from 6 to 8. I leave all other professions at their same levels until Dusk.

Once Dusk has come, and all settlers have been pulled into the camp (see Dusk Arrives and A Hall With No Roads below), I generally raise everyone to an encumbrance of 12. Also note that the above values are really for the first day. I tend to keep the inventory of the farmers at 6, at least until they start wearing leather armor or cloth tunics, and the foragers at 8, while everyone is raised to 12 starting on day 2.

Storage Caches

Placing storage caches – groups of storage containers – at various key locations around the map is necessary in ensuring that your settlers are as productive as possible. Building storage containers close to the wagon is a bit of a waste as the settlers are not saving any steps in going to a storage container over the wagon. It is very important to create a few caches in order to cut down on the travel time for your professions. This is especially critical for your gatherer professions that go far afield, such as foragers and wood choppers, and to a lesser extent, miners.

So what is a storage cache? For a wood chopper it is a Woodpile, Too Chest, and a Food Barrel, at a minimum. Find a stretch of dense timber and place these three storage containers in the center of them. This will allow the wood choppers to walk out to the timber area, start chopping, unload wood, eat lunch, and grab a new tool after it breaks all without leaving the work area. Ideally, they will be able to come out at the beginning of the day and stay out all day until it is time to return at Dusk.

By adding a Resource Crate to this cache you can also service the foragers, who need that storage container to store the collected wool and the animal hair, hides, and fat. Given that foragers typically walk the farthest during the day, storage caches far from the wagon will save them a tremendous number of steps.

Note that these storage containers will be targets for goblins, especially archers who love to shoot fire arrows at them, so you may well have to replace them over time. Also, make sure that you have a surplus of storage so that if these storage containers are attacked you do not lose critical resources due to their loss.

As a side note, if you are the sort that likes to make paved roads or large walled areas, having a storage cache for builders will also be critical. This will require a Mining Stockpile, Tool Chest, Food Barrel, and a Builder's Cart. This will give miners and builders all of the necessary storage so they do not need to return to camp until the job is done.

How Much Food is Enough?

This thread on Migrant Spawn Mechanics, from one of the game's developers, tells us a key algorithm of the game: (number of settlers + 1) * 8.4 food = minimum number of food to entice a new migrant. So, when I said that I had about 100 food and "that is enough" I meant to entice one more migrant. ([8 settlers + 1 migrant] * 8.4 food = 76 food needed.) Of course, once I get a migrant then more surplus food would be required. Generally speaking 100+ food will support 12 settlers, so if you can maintain that level you have quite a bit of room for growth. But when you start getting into 20 and 30 settlers, you will need a correspondingly larger surplus to entice migrants.

Detecting Enemy Mobs

Watching all of the other YouTubers I see that the most common method of detecting enemy mobs is to use the [Page Down] key until you reach the bottom of the map (when the map turns black) and then scroll around looking for the creatures. It is far easier to open the un.sav file in a text editor and look at the last section of the document. This is where the mobs, merchants, and migrants appear. In this example (see figure below) there are 8 mobs (all spiders) and 1 merchant on the map.

On the Mac, which is what I game on, I can leave this file open and every time the file gets updated the text will reload in the screen. By simply looking at the bottom of this file I can detect when the mobs appear. It saves a lot of time scrolling around.

If you are interested in what these numbers mean, keep reading. Let's take an example line:

Spider/48.9/-3.4/-23.1/225/0/0/False/

For mobs each element is separated by a '/'. The first element is the type of mob, in this case a Spider.
The second element is the X coordinate.
The third element is the Y (elevation) coordinate.
The fourth element is the Z coordinate.
The fifth element, I believe, it the direction it is facing at the time of the same, in degrees.
The sixth element is the number of hit points the mob has.
The seventh element, I believe, is the "sub-type". For example, each of the types of goblins indicate a different number here, representing marauders, ravagers, archers, etc.
I am unsure what the eighth element is for, but I have alway seen a value of "False".

Note that this example is of a spider I had killed, but not yet harvested, so it had 0 hit points.

I point this out because it is interesting to look at. There are two hit point values for wolves that I have seen. The ones with higher hit points invariably are "lone wolves", while the weaker ones run in packs. I mention this because it can be very dangerous to take on a lone wolf with a single infantry.

Of course, this only lets you know that enemy are on the map. Once you see them in the file you still have to hit [Page Down] to get to the bottom and scroll around to find them, but this method means you only do it when you know that they are on the map somewhere. Also, by looking at the coordinates you can get a sense whether they are in a single cluster or more than one.

Now that you know the secret, don't go cheating and updating the un.sav file now!

Speaking of that, there is a time in which I will modify the un.sav file: when the game hits a bug and spawns a mob in the air or underground. Leaving these mobs on the map will lower your chances of receiving migrants (something I will go into in more detail in a future episode), even though they are no threat, so your best recourse is to quit the game, edit the offending mob out of the file, and then start the game back up.

Pickaxe Tiers

The basic sequence of the game's "technology tree" is:

1. You are in the Stone Age. Take a stone pickaxe and mine copper ore.
2. Smelt the copper ore and make a copper ingot.
3. Make a copper pickaxe.
4. Take the copper pickaxe and mine tin ore (and coal too).
5. Smelt the tin ore and make a tin ingot.
6. Smelt a copper ingot and a tin ingot to make a bronze ingot.
7. Make a bronze pickaxe. You are now in the Bronze Age.
8. Take the bronze pickaxe and mine iron ore.
9. Smelt the iron ore into an iron ingot.
10. Smelt the iron ingot into a steel ingot by using coal.
11. Make a steel pickaxe. You are now in the Steel Age.
12. Take the steel pickaxe and mine silver and gold ore.

Generally speaking, once you reach the Bronze Age most of your copper should go to making bronze ingots. However, the Food Barrel still requires a copper ingot to make, so you cannot use up all of your copper ingots for bronze.

Likewise, once you reach the Steel Age you still need to keep iron ingots around for a number of other items, such as doors, wall sconces, tongs, and so on.

Micromanaging Mining

Miners break pickaxes, that is all there is to it. It is inevitable. No matter how much time and effort it took you to get that first steel pickaxe, it will get broken.

Miners will automatically grab a better pickaxe when it becomes available. You cannot easily control who uses what pickaxe. Sometimes the Clumsy guy grabs your shiny, new, high-tech pickaxe ... and breaks it mining grass. That's how it goes.

When you are early into the game, and you have that first copper pickaxe, you need to make sure that the miner that grabs it works only on mining tin ore until you have collected all of the ones that you see in the area and you can comfortably start making bronze. To force a miner to mine specific blocks, select the miner, right-click on the block containing the tin ore (or right beside it, if in a wall). Watch the miner like a hawk for a little while, ensuring that he gets a good load of tin before letting him use your precious pickaxe for regular mining duty.

Once you get to bronze and steel you will have to do the same thing, so you ensure that they get the better ores, although it is much less likely that they will break those pickaxes as they are more durable. Your greatest time of vulnerability is with that first copper pickaxe.

Micromanaging Building

Builders are probably the derpiest profession in the game. That is because their AI is the most complicated. The simple rule of thumb is: if you want your builders to be the most efficient, build using only one material at a time, one or two layers (levels) at a time. Anything else invites builders running back to their carts grabbing materials, unloading materials, and grabbing more of what they previously had.

To force a builder to build in a specific spot next (they will often leave holes in their building), select the builder, and right-click on the block next to where you want them to build. You may have to do this several times, especially if there are several blocks nearby they need to build, using a different material than what they have.

Dusk Arrives

I am a firm believer in daytime professions versus nighttime professions. I rarely have foragers out at night, unless they are accompanying a war party, looting corpses (more on that in a future episode). Once I have established a tree farm close to my camp I will let wood choppers chop at night, but only if I start running low on wood.

The profession that I tend to go to during the darkness hours are builders and miners. Building tends to be generally safe because you are building houses close in to the camp. The one area where it might be a little risky is when they build the settlement's walls, as they are on the outskirts of the settlement.

The simplest way to force the hunters and gatherers home is to reset their profession to a crafter, such as builder. It is also a good time to find out who should be a tailor and have them make rope from all that animal hair that the foragers have been collecting all day.

Another task to consider doing when dusk arrives is designating the hall. See When to Define the Hall below for more discussion.

Inventory Management

When you are in the early game – basically in the Stone Age – the primary defense is to arm everyone except archers and infantry with the hunting knife. In order to do this you need to go into the Inventory (F3) screen and set the Hunting Knife setting to +1.

I also set the herder (when I get them later) to always carry a crook, shears, and hunting knife so that when they switch tasks – herding, gathering, and slaughtering respectively – without constantly running back to the tool chest. Unless the herder is sleeping or eating he should spend all of his time bringing in new animals or in the livestock pen. I will cover herding more extensively in a future episode.

There is two bugs that you should be aware of when it comes to forcing settlers to carry specific items: the Builder Sword bug and the Archer Knife bug.

The Builder Sword bug is simple: if a builder is carrying a sword he will always complain about needing to empty his inventory and will never build until you get him to drop the sword. Put simply, do not give your builder a sword. This bug bites me every so often because I often send foragers and wood choppers out with swords when I have extras. When I switch them back to builders at dusk (see Dusk Arrives above), I have to ensure that I change the Sword setting back to 0, then reset it back to +1 the next day when they resume their day profession.

The Archer Knife bug is also simple: if an archer is carrying a hunting knife (or sword), even if they are carrying arrows, they will not fire their bows against the enemy; they will charge them and fight in melee. Again this happens when I switch between a profession where I have them carry a hunting knife (practically all of them) and to an archer. Once you notice an archer with a hunting knife, the only way to force him to discard the knife is to switch him to another profession (like Adventurer), wait for him to discard the gear, and then switch them back to archer. Just changing the Hunting Knife setting to 0 will not do it.

Don't Guess – Look

I have watched so many videos where  someone will see a settler doing something they don't expect and will click on the settler and then force them to move to where they want, then watch the settle walk back again, curse the game's "bugs" and keep doing this until they finally give up. Eventually the settler will do the task they were trying to do and you will hear "oh, you needed to eat!"

If the settler does something unexpected, especially if it is not what you want, first pause the game. Select the settler and open the Information dialog (F1) and read the task they are doing. (Read all of the task too, not just the first part.) This will tell you what they are trying to do and will give you a hint as to whether to not you can override their behavior. Here are some common tasks that settlers do that frustrate gamers:

• You send an infantry or archer out to attack an enemy mob. As soon as they move to the square you indicated, they immediately turn around and head back to camp. Possible causes:
• They need to eat. You can easily override this behavior with infantry, but archers are stubborn and they will consistently defy you trying to get them to fight on an empty stomach.
• You built some cool piece of equipment that is better than what they have and they want to use it. Again, you can overcome this behavior with infantry but not with archers.
• They want to wait in the hall, guard a point, or walk on a patrol route. You forgot to change their preferences, so when they finished their move they went back to the task you told them to do.
• They want to build with some material other than the one they have in inventory. This happens all of the time when the closest block to them needs to be made with the other material. Moving them closer to a building designation that uses the material they have, or better yet only designating one material in an area at a time, will fix this problem.
• They want to mine some material other than the one you want. Move them closer to where you want them to mine.
• They want to sleep. Change their sleep schedule or the fatigue level where they automatically sleep.

Put simply, look to see what the settler is trying to do. Don't reflexively click to move them where you want. Find out what they are trying to do first, before you click. Otherwise you might be wasting valuable time, and raising your blood pressure unnecessarily.

When to Define the Hall

Generally speaking, you define a hall when you want to attract migrants and merchants to your settlement. This is offset by the fact that it also attracts enemy mobs that want to steal your wealth or eat your brains. There is one other advantage to a hall: it provides a focal point for when you set settlers preferences to wait in the hall when then are idle (or sleeping). By defining a hall you can see when someone does not have work to do (they are standing around) and you can control where they go to sleep. (If there is no hall they sleep around the wagon, which can sometimes block the access to supplies for settlers that are still awake.)

Although I did not do it soon enough in the video, by defining a hall at dusk you will ensure that everyone goes to sleep where you want them too. I would strongly recommend defining the hall if the wagon is in an exposed position when darkness falls. Sometimes you can quickly build a small, walled enclosure before dark and put the hall in there, giving you a bit of protection during the night.

Remember: you can always change the designation of where your hall is located. Because mobs are attracted to the hall, if you detect that mobs have spawned while everyone is asleep you can pause the game and quickly move the hall designation to another spot on the map, effectively luring them away from your settlers. It is sort of a cheesy tactic, but sometimes you need to do that to survive.

A Hall With No Roads

A hall is required to accept a migrant or trade with a merchant, but it is the roads that allow both to spawn. It is also the road designations that help the mobs find your hall easier too. Defining a hall without defining roads is relatively safe; mobs tend not to find it during the course of the night, unless you have defined it close to a map edge. If your intent is simply use the hall to define a sleeping place for the first night, do not designate any roads.

That said, as soon as dawn breaks on day two you should start defining your roads to the hall so you can get migrants and merchants. I rarely delay defining the hall and roads later than dawn of day two. Be sure and pause the game because road definitions can take some time. I will cover roads in more depth in a future episode.

Expanding the Farm

The key rule to remember is that the farmers will farm for seed, not food, until they have 25 seeds in reserve for that particular crop. There are lots of theories on what size you should initially define your farm plots. Make them too small and farms will not grow as fast as they might. Define them too large and farmers take longer to reach their seed reserve level. So what is the right amount?

Personally, I now plant in rows of 10 blocks. I start with only as many block as I start out with seeds, and then add a few blocks at a time as they get more seeds. Once the row of 10 blocks is fully planted, I generally let the farmers build up to 35 seeds for that crop before I will plant a new row of 5 blocks with that seed type.

At some point, if you have too many dirt spots on your farm, it probably means you have over planted for the number of farmers you have assigned. The farm should either be tilled or showing with a growing crop. When dirt or grass spots appear it is because the farmers cannot get to tilling and seeding it fast enough.

Balancing Labor

As happened in the video, make sure you balance your labor properly. Some professions – like builder, blacksmith, stone mason, and carpenter – have a dependency on the production of other profession. For example a blacksmith cannot smelt ore into ingots until the miners mine the ore. Carpenters cannot make wood planks until the wood choppers chop the trees down and split them into logs. By assigning too many settlers to the "consumer" professions and not the "producer" ones, you run the risk of material shortages, as I did when I had too many builders and not enough miners.

Summary

Well that is it for this episode. Let me know what you think of this format. Feel free to comment here, on YouTube, or both. Consider subscribing to both also. I am working on the next episode right now. I am also working on my voiceovers. (It sounds like I am bored, which I am not. I also have a terrible Southern drawl which I am trying to compensate for.)

Starting a Let's Play Series

There are a number of Let's Play Timber & Stone series out there on YouTube, and I am probably subscribed to most, if not all of them. I am always looking for new ideas on how to increase the challenges for this game. And, once you get to a certain point in the game, you start to say "what am I going to do next?" You don't really need to go to all of the effort of recording, editing, and posting a video onto YouTube for that, however, so it begs the question: why do a Let's Play series?

One of the things that I hear quite often are remarks about how the game is "buggy" and that it doesn't let you have the level of control that you want. Often people point to the beta label as proof that it is the game, and not them. Sorry, but in almost all cases you are wrong: it is you. Timber & Stone provides you excellent control over the settlers, you just need to understand what the commands and controls let you do, and how the AI works. Once you have mastered that, you have an amazing amount of control, but it is (intentionally) not perfect and total. In essence, you need to embrace the fact that those virtual people do have minds of their own sometimes.

I started this blog as a way of discussing these issues, but I quickly came to understand that this medium is insufficient; video is very appropriate for game tutorials. I have also come to realize that video by itself is insufficient. Watching a long introduction where the person is simply talking, but nothing is happening on screen is not very interesting. My experiment here will be in combining both the written and video mediums in combination. The video will contain the playing, while the blog will contain much of the lengthier explanations about why I am doing what I am. It is intended that if you want to get the most out of the experience, you would watch the video of a gaming session and read the show notes and associated blog entries.

Another reason for the Let's Play series is that it is hard to come up with, and illustrate, specific concepts when there is no context. The lessons will naturally come out as the challenges and crises arise in normal game play. One of the concepts that I want to show is how you respond to enemy threats and how that response changes over time, as you get more resources available. Specifically, this is to show how your settlement goes through phases: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and finally the Steel Age. These building materials radically change how you respond to the challenges of the game.

I have actually recorded three separate sessions as a start to this new series, however, I have discarded them all. Initially I wanted to play a new challenge: building a fortress in the middle of a lake surrounded by mountains (you have no idea how long it took to find the map with the right terrain and combination of resources) playing the settlers as dwarves. (No there are no player races ... yet.) I reckoned that dwarves would not use archery, but would use ballistas. Even though bronze is stronger than iron I was going to build my tools, weapons, and armor out of iron (and later steel) and I would largely forego bronze. (You cannot forego it completely, however, as you need bronze to mine iron, unless you are lucky enough to start with iron or steel ingots, or a pickaxe that can mine iron ore.) Essentially, I was going to completely change my normal play style.

But therein lied the rub: if I don't play the normal, "formulaic" game that is so successful, newer players might not find the series as useful. It would be a good idea for season two, but not for the first season. For that I would need to do something a little more traditional. So, here we go: Episode 1 of my new Let's Play series. I suggest you watch it first, then read the rest of this blog post.

The Terrain

My normal play style in Timber & Stone is to choose a map with water. I prefer maps that are not taken up by a large amount of water, nor do I want it to be too great an obstacle for foraging, migrants, or merchants. A map with a lake in the middle is actually pretty ideal, especially if it still grants you access land access to all four edges of the map. I don't really like, but I will play, maps where only three sides are land. I do not play maps where I cannot access two edges of the map without building bridges. This usually means choosing a River area rather than Coastline.

One note that I have not seen discussed in videos or on the forum (but it does not mean it is not there) is that River and Coastline can appear in squares that are not adjacent to Water squares. That may not seem intuitive, especially for Coastline, but what this says is that the water you see on a map might be a feeder river to the main river on the map, or a small inlet or bay just off of the main coastline. In all cases, both limit you search for "the perfect square" to just those adjacent to water. You will often find that up to three squares away from a water square is still considered River or Coastline. Give it a test!

I generally like Medium density for timber. Sparse makes it difficult to collect enough timber and sustain the demand. (I usually build in stone, so I do not have a high demand for wood, but all of my roofs are made with shingles, so I do have some demand beyond logs for tools.) I generally shy away from Dense timber as it blocks fields of fire for archers, which are my primary military unit. My preference, in order from highest to lowest is: Medium, Dense, and Sparse timber.

As I am a miner at heart (hence the game name Miner Bob), I generally do not like Flat Grasslands and prefer Hills. That gives me plenty of room to dig. That said, Mountain terrain can generate some radical maps, leading to interesting building ideas. Maybe season two ...

Resources

Given that I select a terrain square on the World Map with River, that makes Fish automatically Abundant. Given my reliance on Archers it is very important that I find a square with Abundant Chickens also. Because you cannot have every resource rated as Abundant, my preference from highest to lowest for animals would be: Fish, Chickens, Boar, and Sheep.

When it comes to ores, one key point to remember about version 1.52 is that you only need 1/2 of the Tin as you do of Copper to make Bronze. That means that Tin Ore can be less common than Copper Ore. There is one additional use of Tin Ore, however, and that is that it makes a great ore for leveling up your Blacksmith. If you fail at smelting it and lose some Tin Ore as a result, it is very likely not to affect you. You will find throughout the game that you always have a lot more Tin ingots than Copper.

Another interesting point about ores is how they spawn. In this thread on the Timber & Stone forum [insert reference to forum post from Ethrel] it describes the ore spawning mechanics. Essentially it says that when a chunk is generated it generates the rarer ores first and then randomly places the blocks. When a more common ore is generated it can randomly overwrite the rarer ore blocks. So, if you want to focus on, say, iron, it is better to have the Tin Ore and Copper Ore values be less common than the Iron value.

I almost always try and maximize my Copper Ore value choosing a less common (but not Rare) Tin Ore value. I generally want a good Iron value and a really good Coal value. I have started re-thinking that strategy. Although Bronze is stronger than Iron, ultimately your goal is to get to Steel. That means you need very strong values in Iron and Coal. Again, as you cannot be Abundant in every ore resource, my preference from highest to lowest would be: Coal, Iron, Copper, and Tin. Why is Coal Ore on top? It requires two Coal Ore to make one Steel Ingot and it is used as a fuel source for the Forge.

The Map

Once you have a square picked out remember exactly where it is! You may not like the first map generated, and may go through generating several maps before finding the one you want, so remembering which exact square to click on is key. Here is a short YouTube video I did previously on finding the right map.

In my case I wanted to build a castle/town on a lake, so I really needed a lake towards the center of the board. After what seemed like an hour of looking, I finally found one. But would the game be playable?

For more information on selecting a map square, the terrain, and the settlement location, you can read my older blog post Picking a Settlement Location.

The Decision

After all that and the game still might not be playable? Yes. You might have a bad selection of settlers, not enough seeds, or not enough tools. Again, if you are going to make a 10+ hour investment of your time in playing this game, why settle for a game where the odds are stacked against you? Let's look at some of the problems that might arise from bad starting resources.

Settlers

Despite what I see many players do, determining whether your starting settlers are "good" or not depends primarily upon their traits, not their levels in their professions.

Note this is true of version 1.52. But testing of version 1.6 shows that this concept will no longer be true, unless the developers decide to change the game back (which seems unlikely). In the future most tasks require you to be a minimum level in a profession in order to accomplish the task, so while traits remain important, levels become more important in the starting game.

What you are looking for are "bad" traits, and primarily at the start, you are looking for the Overeater trait. Put simply, a settler with the Overeater trait eats 50% more than a settler without that trait. You really cannot afford too many of them and hope to get your settlement off of the ground. Should you reject the game out of hand if you have one? Absolutely not. If you have spent even a modicum of time finding the right square on the world map and the right terrain the last thing you want to do is start the process all over again. No, simply having one or two Overeaters becomes a factor in whether you should abandon the game.

Although other "bad" traits are important, as are many of the "good" ones, I don't feel any of the other traits come into play as to whether you should abandon the game. If anything, a good combination of "good" traits (Quick Learner, Hard Worker, Courageous, Good Vision, and Strong Back) might convince you to overlook an Overeater or two.

Being an Overeater in real life, I naturally do not follow the advice I have heard and read that say "never accept an Overeater". I say, figure out how to live with it. Just maybe not for your first game...

Seeds

Put simply, if you start with no seeds for food crops you will have a very hard time surviving. I have never had a Merchant offer to trade food crop seeds, only Flax, Cotton, and Wheat seeds. I have also not seen very many Migrants bring food crop seeds, if ever. If you start with no food crop seeds it is, to my mind, an automatic restart. Only once did I accept the challenge of starting without food crop seeds. I survived, but I struggled mightily. A fun challenge, but not for the first game (or season).

Not having Wheat, Flax, or Cotton makes it harder, but I would not restart unless I had several other negative factors. Starting with two of the three is a good start; one is still acceptable.

Tools and Resources

Next I check the tools that I start with. The three critical tools at the start are a Hammer, an Axe, and a Pickaxe. If you have no hammers you cannot build anything, including another hammer. Automatic restart.

Unlike Minecraft, you cannot punch trees to chop wood; you need an axe. If you run out of wood and have no axe (or they all broke), it is an automatic restart.

Similarly, if you run out of stone and have no pickaxe (or they all broke), you cannot get any more stone, so it is an automatic restart.

Okay, so there is a way to get timber and stone if you lose your tools: you can trade for them with the Merchant. But understand that: 1) you can do practically nothing until a Merchant arrives, certainly nothing that requires tools; and 2) the Merchant decides the trades, not you.

I generally don't worry about the other resources when it comes to determining whether to restart or not, but they will come into play with regards to my starting actions.

With that out of the way, hopefully you are not restarting.

For more information on the starting resources, read my older blog post Assessing Your Starting Resources.

First Orders

My older blog post First Orders goes over what you should focus on before you unpause the game and have your settlers start their tasks. What tasks should they do first? What options should you set? What should you build right away? A lot of that is covered in that post, plus this episode and the next in the series.

What About Walls and Moats?

One of the areas where I see comments and recommendations is regarding building moats and walls right at the start. I not only do not agree with that approach, but I think it is detrimental to the growth and thus the survival of your new settlement.

In the first day, during the daylight hours, you have to hunt and gather as much as possible. Hunting and gathering incurs the greatest danger, as the settler is typically isolated from others when an enemy suddenly appears. Worse still, they are usually encumbered by the materials they have been collecting, making escape harder. If you add to that low visibility – trying to hunt or gather in the dark – you are essentially ensuring your eventual destruction.

Although it is unlikely that an enemy mob will spawn during daylight hours on day 1, it is possible. But it is most likely to occur during the hours of darkness, between day 1 and 2. For this reason, performing hunting and gathering tasks (foraging and wood chopping, and to a lesser extent fishing) during daylight of the first day is critical. The more settlers set to building walls, the fewer that are chopping wood or gathering berries. The more settlers set to digging a moat, the more they are collecting dirt and not collecting stone.

Although Dirt is used to make Brick, you generally do not make a lot of that at the start. Stone is a critical resource in the early game as it is used to make practically everything. The game is called Timber & Stone after all.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying don't ever build a wall or moat. I am just saying that you cannot really afford to put so much labor towards such a project when there are more critical tasks to be done during daylight hours. You want to use those Wood Choppers as Builders to start a wall at night? Go ahead. Just realize that come dawn, they need to sharpen their axes again.

Next episode I will let the settlers start performing their tasks. As interesting points come up, I will stop the action and explain some of my thought process about the decisions I make. I hope you find it enjoyable and useful.

Feel free to leave comments, here and on the YouTube page.

First Orders

Timber and Stone allows the player some control over the settlers. First, you can set their profession, which dictates what tasks they can perform. Some professions, like Farmers, Foragers, and Fishers, go about their tasks automatically. Others require you specify that exactly is to be worked on, such by specifying where blocks are to be placed (for Builders) or removed (for Miners) or by indicating items to be made (Carpenters, Blacksmiths, and Stone Masons). Finally, some are semi-autonomous, where they do general actions, but specifically how they are carried out is handled by the game (guarding a point, patrolling a route, training, wood chopping, and so on).

So, to gain some of the control over the settlers, start by setting their Preferences by pressing the [F4] when a settler is selected. most of the preferences change based on the profession of the settler, but a few are common to all.

The first preference is Wait in Hall while idle. Simply put, if the settler has nothing to do, they wait in the area defined as the Hall (more on that in another blog post) until given some task, either automatically or by the player taking some action. In general, I have this option set for all professions, although there will be times when you want this turned off for military forces. I will cover that in a separate blog post, so for now, I set all settlers with this option.

The second common preference is Sleep, which can be either Sleep autonomously based on fatigue. or Scheduled sleep. I have seen Youtube "Let's Play" videos of Timber and Stone and most choose to keep most everyone awake during the daylight hours and then schedule them to sleep during darkness, keeping only a military guard awake during the night. That makes a lot of sense for video, as it is harder to see what is going on during the night, especially as Youtube videos tend to be darker than the players' screens. But for people not recording their gaming sessions scheduled sleep does not make sense for most of the settlers. Yes, you should have a military guard awake during the hours of darkness, but it is easier to let everyone work and sleep as needed (i.e. based upon their fatigue) simply because you cannot skip forward in time. (You can speed up the game to double speed though.) So, by not working during the night, you have to sit through about 10 minutes of game (at double-speed) doing nothing. That is giving up a lot of productivity and you will still have your settlers eat as much. (The truth is that settlers don't need to sleep quite as much in-game as we do in real life.)

So, I set everyone to Sleep autonomously based on fatigue. This allows you to set how tired they get before they go to sleep and how rested they have to be before the awake. I leave the Sleep when: setting at Fatigued and the Awake when: setting at Well Rested. It is important not to set the Sleep when: setting to Exhausted as it gives you no wiggle room if you need to keep a settler awake just a little bit longer to complete a critical task. I have experimented with changing the Awake when: setting to Energetic, but usually that is something better set for later in the game, as it makes for longer sleep/awake cycles.

Most of the other settings are about reporting, whether it be success or failure at crafting, breaking a tool, collecting a resource, and so on. Generally speaking, I turn them all on, except for Miners collecting resources (I only care when it is Metal Ore). The more information, the better, especially early on in the game.

Here are a few of the profession-specific preferences I look at:

Wood Chopper – Independently chop nearest trees. If you set this you do not have to designate which trees will get cut down. The Wood Chopper will chop the closest tree each time they become idle. I prefer not to set this preference as I like designating specific trees to be cut down. Also, it is very easy for a Wood Chopper to "get away from you" and end up far away from the settlement at the worst times. You usually find this out when you get a message indicating that the Wood Chopper has spotted an enemy and they are too far away for anyone to help them. If you do set this preference, be sure to arm your Wood Chopper with a Sword so they can defend themselves better.

Miner – Resources collected is unset but Metal Ore collected is set. After awhile you may turn this off, especially if you are tracking the number of Ores. (The Resource Tracker will be discussed later.)

Forager – If you have a Hunting Knife and are not yet Herding Livestock, check all the preferences under the Autonomy section. If you don't have a Hunting Knife, only checking Gather berries for food will stop the Forager from complaining about not having a knife. When you want the Forager to only collect resources from the dead (a subject for another time), do not set any of the preferences. That will force them to focus only on gathering from the dead. Also, if you are going to go for herding livestock I generally never kill the Chickens, leaving them available for herding. (Hopefully the wolves will not get to them first.)

For any skilled labor, I always set both Crafting Success and Crafting Failure as I usually want to know about the former because I need the item and I want to know about the latter to tell me to try again (assuming the settler did not lose the resource in the failed attempt).

So, with all of the preferences set, it is time to identify the tasks.

Wood Chopping

If you chose to let the Wood Chopper chop trees autonomously you will not need to designate the trees to be cut. Note, however, that you should set the Encumbrance (on the Inventory screen by pressing [F3]) of the settler to very low in the beginning. I choose a Mass of 4 by moving the Encumbrance slider to the left. This will force the Wood Chopper to empty their inventory as soon as the weight they are carry exceeds that amount. This will cause them to chop only a few trees, unload, then chop some more. If you wait until they are at full encumbrance the Carpenter will not be able to make any tools, so it is critical that you reset this at the start and only reset it back (to 12) when you have a comfortable reserve of tools.

Foraging

As I do not want the Foragers roaming around all day collecting berries before they come back and unload – if they are caught by a wolf you lose an awful lot of food because each food unit has very little weight – I tend to reset their Encumbrance to 6 if they are collecting only berries or 8 if they are killing animals too.

Mining

Miners will not mine autonomously; you must designate all of the blocks to be removed. It is important not to designate too many blocks all at once. You often do not have control over which block they choose to mine first. It is important to mine Raw Stone as close to the Wagon as possible, so they do not have to go far in order to provide the Carpenter with material for making tools. You also have to balance when you switch from providing Raw Stone for tools and when you use them for a Mining Stockpile. You will quickly overwhelm your storage capacity on the Wagon (Miner mine faster than Wood Choppers chop wood), so after you have enough Raw Stone to get you over the hump for tools, collect eight Raw Stone and build a Mining Stockpile. Put it near where you think you are going to mine. Once you have the Mining Stockpile done, start looking for Copper Ore near to you and designate that your Miners mine it. You must get sufficient Copper Ingots to make Food Barrels and Copper Pickaxes. (The Copper Pickaxe will allow you to mine Tin Ore and Coal. A Tin Ingot mixed with a Copper Ingot makes a Bronze Ingot. A Bronze Pickaxe will allow you to mine Iron Ore. At that point you can mine the majority of the block on the map.) So the priority is:

1. Mine enough Raw Stone to get about two of every tool (12 Raw Stone).
2. Build a Mining Stockpile (8 Raw Stone).
3. Mine as many Copper Ore that are close by as possible.

In Step 1 you should have an Encumbrance of 4. For Step 2 you will need to raise your Encumbrance to 9. By Step 3 you can go back to your normal Encumbrance (12). Note that the Trait: Strong Back does not raise your Encumbrance, but rather determines what level will start to slow your movement.

Carpentry

How you started with tools will determine the order that you must make additional ones. The important thing is to have a replacement Axe or Pickaxe first, if you only started with one. The Hunting Knife does not require any wood, only Raw Stone, so it can be made second. You should not worry about Stone Tongs until after everything else is made, as they are only used by a Blacksmith, and you will not have one in the very early game.

It is important that in the beginning you do not build tools in groups. Build one tool of each type individually before moving on to the second copy. You will have to manage the queue actively in the first 10 minutes or so.

Farming

Farming is probably the one area where you will hear a lot of different theories on how to do it. First off, farming takes some time to get going. Things have to grow, so don't expect to get food from it the first day. But, you want to be in a good position by the end of that first day, otherwise your second and third day will see some lean times.

Why is farming important? Well, it will feed and clothe your settlement of course. But it is also a strong factor in determining whether your settlement is worthy of attracting Migrants. The more food, and food production, the more attractive your settlement will be to Migrants. Farming is only one means to getting food production, and it is a pretty poor one for the first few days.

The main thing to understand about farming is that the Farmers will grow crops to produce primarily seeds until they have "enough", at which point they will primarily produce food. That tipping point is apparently when they reach 20 seeds in reserve for each seed type. (That is why it is better to have eight seeds of one type than four seeds each of two types. The former requires collecting 20 seeds in reserve while the latter requires 40.)

I grow my crops in "patches" of four blocks (a 2 by 2 arrangement or rows, but it does not really matter). When I have four seeds I plant another patch of that type and keep adding patches. When I have a few patches of each type I then plant a patch when the seeds get up to 8-12 seeds. After that I will only plant patches once they get to 24 seeds or more. By using smaller patches it seems like the Farmers spend less time tilling soil that is not ready to be used. (But I could be wrong about that.) If anything, it keep me more focused on the issue, so I manage it better.

By the way, your first Food Barrel should be near the farming area, to ensure the Farmers do not have to go far to gather and drop of seeds and food.

In the image to the above right you can see my example world's crop patches. Each row is a different crop and I have arranged it to look like terraced farming (just for looks). The Food Barrel is on the left and the crops are on the back-side of the hill, towards the river. As most of the enemies will be coming from the other three directions, this gives the crops some protection. I'll be making walls for better fire protection later.

End of Daylight on Day 1

Following these basic guidelines I was able to accomplish the following by Evening of Day 1:

1. I collected about 175 food that day, mostly from foraging. Although I did manage to build a Fishing Pole, the Fisher quickly broke it. I did manage to build a second Fishing Pole before the end of the day. As the settlement is close to the water, it is relatively safe to fish during the hours of darkness.
2. With always one, and sometimes two Wood Choppers, I was able to collect almost 100 Wood Logs. Given the number of tools and storage containers made during the day, having 79 remaining is pretty good. Also, there is still a tremendous amount of wood very close to the settlement, so continuing to chop during the hours of darkness is relatively safe.
3. Although I have only seven Tin Ore at the end of the day, I was able to smelt three Copper Ingots, making two Food Barrels and a Copper Pickaxe during the day. Fortunately that Pickaxe is still intact, so I can continue to mine Coal and Tin Ore.
4. Not counting the tools in the hands of the settlers, my tool reserves are:
1. 6 Hunting Knives
2. 5 Stone Hammers
3. 6 Stone Tongs
4. 3 Stone Axes
5. 4 Stone Pickaxes
6. 2 Stone Hoes and 1 Copper Hoe (which I started with)
7. 1 Fishing Pole
8. 1 Shepard's Crook
9. 1 Longbow
10. 3 Rope
5. My Raw Stone reserves are low (47), but mostly because I am using them to build Fieldstone. I also have 125 Dirt available to terraform the land for the terraced farms.
6. I have two of every seed except for Turnip Seeds, which for some reason I now have 9 of, 3 for Corn Seeds, and only 1 for Wheat Seeds. (Remember, you have to get above 20 seeds before they crops start producing primarily for food.)

The figure below shows the start of my first building, on top of the hill. I have one Straw Bed and a little bit of a Fieldstone floor started. My Archer will stand guard at night, but with only 7 Stone Arrows, he cannot hold off an invasion.

The next figure shows my "industrial" area, where I have the Blacksmith's Stone Forge and Stone Anvil, along with a Masonry Bench. Notice that the Mining Stockpile is close at hand, as is a Tool Chest and a Food Barrel. All of this is right next to the entrance to the mine shaft, which are stair down to the last mineable level.

As shown in the figure to the right, the mine consists of a two-block wide passageway with branches off to the sides (the stairs up are at the bottom of the figure). By making a branch every third block you can see all of the blocks in between each branch. Once you clear out a branch you simply go back and pick out all of the Metal Ores. This is a much more efficient method than simply clearing out a large hollow space, removing every block.

Note that you may want to clear out large spaces underground, however. When you start needing large numbers of Mining Stockpiles, Resource Crates, Builder's Carts, and Woodpiles, they are much safer underground, away from fires, which in my opinion is the single biggest threat in the game. The underground also provides you with a safe haven should a Spider Matriarch or Necromancer show up before you can effectively deal with it.

Well, I hope that has helped a little. As I continue to play this and other Timber and Stone maps I will continue to post more tips and strategies. For now, if you have any questions, please post a comment.

Assessing Your Starting Resources

When you start the game you are given eight settlers, a wagon, and a set of supplies. Immediately hit pause (the [P] key, unless you have remapped it) so you can assess your situation because each game randomizes what you get.

Seeds

Before looking at anything, you should probably look at your seeds. This will determine what you can grow initially. Simply put, if you have no seeds for food, you should probably restart the game. Open the Resources dialog and click on the Raw tab.

In my example world I got pretty lucky: I five different seeds, three of which are food. If you want to see what an item is good for you can always look it up on the Unofficial Timber and Stone Wiki.

But in short, Carrot, Corn, Potato, Pumpkin, and Turnips are food crops. Currently there is no information on whether the growing characteristics are different for each crop type. For now, just consider the differences are for color. If you do not get seeds for at least two food crops you should probably consider restarting, unless you can immediately start Fishing and there are a lot of Berry Bushes and Boar, Sheep, and Chickens on the map.

Cotton allows you to make Cloth and Beds (Cloth) (which are the best quality). Not having access to cotton seeds at the beginning hurts, but is not crippling. You will have to wait for a Merchant to trade for it or a Migrant to bring it with them. Note, however, that lack of access to Cloth means you need to reserve your Animal Hides for Beds (Straw) and not use them to make Leather.

Wheat is not a food crop, but a utility crop. Wheat allows you to feed Livestock and make Beds (Straw). Note that if you do not get both Wheat Seeds and Cotton Seeds you will have a very hard time as you will not be able to make Beds until you get one of those crops. Unless you get a lot of other highly favorable resources, you should consider restarting.

Flax is interesting in that it can make Cloth, but cannot make a Bed (Cloth) without also having Cotton available. So Flax is a poor-man's substitute for Cotton until you get the real thing.

Given the start above, I can see continuing on with this game as I have three food crops and both Wheat and Flax. My early Beds will be Straw until I can get some Cotton, then I can upgrade to Beds (Cloth). But, this also means that I have to be careful with my Animal Hides, as they can be used for Beds (Straw) and Leather, which can be used to make Leather Armor. (More about that later.)

Tools

The next consideration are the raw resources and the tools that you start with. Put simply, every major tool requires timber and stone to build, so if you lack Wood Logs and an Axe or Raw Stone and a Pickaxe you will not be able to make new tools. Start by looking at the number of Wood Logs and Raw Stone you have. This shows you how much of a cushion you have at the start. In my example world I have no Wood Logs, but I have three Raw Stone, so it is critical that I obtain as much timber as possible, as soon as possible.

In the Resources dialog click on the Tools tab to show all of the hand tools you have to start with. Ensure that you have one Hammer, one Axe, and one Pickaxe. Whatever is missing should be the first item(s) you make a Stone version of.

In my example world I have two Hammers (one being Iron), one Axe, two Pickaxes, and one Hoe (a Copper one). This means that I can initially only assign one Wood Chopper to start cutting that critical timber in order to allow me to start building other tools. As I have three Raw Stone in reserve I can build three stone tools before I run out of resources. So the first three things I build that use Raw Stone must be what I need most. One of the Hammers will go to the Carpenter, leaving me a spare, should I need to build a Wood Pile of Mining Stockpile (which I will need to do on the first day).

Looking through the rest of the Hand Tools I see that I have no Hunting Knife, so anyone I assign as a Forager will not be able to get food from a Boar, Sheep, or Chicken until I build one of those. I also do not start with a Fishing Pole, so there is no need to immediately assign someone as a Fisher. (They will just complain incessantly about needing a Fishing Pole to fish.) You can check under the Crafting tab to see if you start with Rope (I do). If so, you can build a Fishing Pole after you have built your critical tools and have a reserve of Wood Logs.

Another critical resource to look for is a Copper Ingot, found under the Crafting tab. One Copper Ingot is required to make a Food Barrel and you will likely need one by the end of the day. In my example world I do not have one, so getting Copper Ore will be a second priority (after getting sufficient Raw Stone).

It always helps to look at all the other tabs to see what other resources you start with, such as Weapons and Armor, but neither are really a factor in whether you restart the game or not.

At this point you should decide whether you need to restart or not. If you started with a lot of good tools you might keep going despite a bad seed lot, but most likely how you fared with seeds will determine whether you restart or keep going.

Settlers

Now that you have looked at seeds and tools, it is time to look at the people you have been given. Quickly go through the eight settlers and count how many have the Trait: Overeater (it is on the Information screen, which can be displayed by pressing [F1] unless you have remapped your keys). Overeaters eat 50% more food than those without the Trait. How many is too many, requiring a restart? That is hard to say, but if you have already determined that food is going to be tight, due to few food crops, no fishing, or few animals and berry bushes, two or three Overeaters may push you over the edge.

In my example world I have three Overeaters, put I will be pushing on. Without the ability to immediately fish, this will make it tough, but I have three food crops, so it should not be a problem.

After you have taken the Overeater count, it is important that you identify the settlers with the Trait: Clumsy. Clumsy people break their tools more frequently, and possibly fail more often at crafting with a resource loss (although the latter has not been verified). For this reason it is not a good idea to use them for skilled labor, like Engineer, Blacksmith or Carpenter. Strangely, they seem to make better Builders, Foragers, Wood Choppers, and Infantry.

Another important Trait is Quick Learner. Quite simply, a Quick Learner will gain experience faster getting them to higher levels more quickly. Your Blacksmith should be a Quick Learner. The best Blacksmith has both Quick Learner and Hard Worker. In fact, carefully selecting your Blacksmith is probably one of the most important decisions, as crafting metal ingots is one of the more important aspects of the game, after securing your food supply. Metal weapons, armor, and tools increase your survival rate and speeds your progress more than any other factor, save food.

To understand what each of the Traits do, see the Unit page on the wiki. Note that as of version 1.52 some of the Traits are not implemented.

In my example world I set one settler as a Carpenter (Level 5), one as a Farmer (Level 3), one as a Wood Chopper (Level 1), and two as Miners (Levels 3 and 1). The remaining (three) settlers are Foragers (Levels 3, 2, and 1), set to picking berries.

Next time: first orders.

Picking a Settlement Location

I figure the easiest way to jog my memory about what to write about is to start a new game and use topics that come up in the course of the game as fodder.

When you start Timber & Stone your first real choice is the screen resolution to use. Although that may sound strange, it does affect gameplay – especially later, when you have more settlers all working separate tasks – as a lagging computer at critical times can get a settler killed.

I run on a Mac and it seems that performance is not as optimal as it could be as I compare my ability to move the camera to gamers on Youtube and it is nowhere near as responsive. I have a higher-end iMac with 32GB of RAM, but there seems to be little means of improving its performance. Let me know if you know how.

I generally play in a windowed screen and one size smaller than my screen resolution. As the size of the community gets larger, and especially at night or when there are fires raging, I will lower the screen size in order to get my Frames Per Second (FPS) rate back up.

The next major choice is what size map to play on. Each map comes with its own sort of challenges:

• Small – fewer resources, easier to rid enemies, quicker arrival of merchants and migrants, better FPS rate, more dangerous in the early game as enemy are upon you faster.
• Large – more resource than you will be able to exploit, hard to rid all enemies in a single day, slow arrival times of merchants and migrants (who may not always make it to your hall), poorer FPS rates, may hit road length limits, safer in the early game as enemy take longer to find and reach you.
• Medium – somewhere between the above two.

For my first game I played a small world. I figured the smaller, the better. As noted above a smaller world makes for a harder game in the early stages. A wolf pack spawning in could easily find and reach your settlement before you can prepare, or worse, spot them. Wolves can do serious damage against unarmed settlers and a pack can tear through a settlement in seconds if no one is armed. (Ironically, I have also seen a settler take out a wolf in a single blow with an axe, so it is not automatic death to the settlers. But don't count on that happening.)

For my most recent games I have taken to using Medium sized maps. They give you more than enough resources while still giving you a reasonable time to mount a defense when enemies spawn on the map. When settlers need to get to the far reaches of the map it is not a four-hour (in game time) round trip, so your foragers, herders, wood cutters, and soldiers can usually make more than two trips during daylight to accomplish their tasks.

The next choice is what kind of terrain you want to settle in. You are presented with a large map and each square represents a different combination of terrain and resources. You may not realize it, but the map displayed is much larger than shown. By using the scroll wheel on your mouse you can zoom in and out and scroll around to different parts of the land.

When you click on a block you will get information similar to the figure shown to the right. In this example, the biome selected is Grasslands, but still with ample timber (Trees = Medium) and the ability to fish (Water = River and Fish = Abundant).

What I try to find is at least Common in Copper, Iron, Coal, and Chickens. Tin can be less common than Copper as it only requires one-half the amount of Tin than Copper in order to make Bronze. Boar and Sheep can be less common as there is a limit to the number of boars, sheep, and chickens that can be on the map at one time. As will be discussed in another post, your goal will generally be to maximize the number of chickens you have, so having an abundance of boar or sheep will only make it harder for a chicken to spawn in.

Whether you have water or not is really a personal choice. Having the ability to fish certainly helps you in Day 2 through 4 with food. But, rivers tend to dominate the map, and thus dominate how you play. Also, because they take up such a large proportion of the map, it reduces the number of other resources – timber, stone, and berry bushes – you get. Additionally, crossing a river slows your settlers movement down tremendously, so collecting resources on the opposite side of a river becomes a time-consuming task. If your river takes up a map edge, that is one less side that you can easily reach with a road, lowering your chances of getting migrants and merchants until you successfully bridge your way across the water. In essence, rivers tend to lead to "turtling" strategies, which alters the way you play.

Settling on a Topography of Hills or Mountains means you will have more stone available to you and you can play more of a mining game (fewer levels on the map will be filled with air). Although it can be an interesting game, settling on Hills or Mountains can be challenging.

In the end, which you choose will depend upon the type of game you wish to play. Because Timber and Stone can be pretty unforgiving you will find yourself trying lots of different types of games until you find your niche. Once that happens you can start challenging yourself with other terrain and resource combinations, trying to master the game under any circumstances. For now, just remember that to grow you need food, so make sure that you either have access to water or plenty of berry bushes and high animal spawn rates to get you started.

Here are the stats for the world I just started. Choosing a coastal area generally means one side of the map will be water. That generally gives you a flank to rest you defense on, but cuts your chances of migrants and merchants until you bridge off that side of the map.

I wanted the Trees to be Dense as I did not want there to be a shortage of trees. Although I tend to build in stone (I mine quite a bit), dense means timber will always be close at hand. I actually chose lower rates than Common for Copper and Iron, so it will be more of a challenge. But as I tend to mine extensively, I should be able to overcome that by Day 5 or so.

With Abundant Fish and Chicken, and lower rates for Boar and Sheep, I should be able to handle my food requirements pretty easily. Of course, fishing only works if I am lucky enough to start with a Fishing Pole or some Rope ...

After clicking Confirm, you are presented with the map, where you can scroll around and see if you really like the place. After looking around I picked location about halfway between the top and bottom of the map, but close to the river. As it turned out, there was a nice hill at that spot, and a large amount of timber, so that is the spot I will settle on.

There aren't a whole lot of berry bushes on the map, so foraging for berries may not be a big strategy.

Remember, if you don't like the map once you have seen it, you can always click the Go Back button and try another spot. I believe you can also click on the same square and have it generate the map again and it will change. (I say "I believe" because I tried it once to see whether the same map would show or whether it would regenerate it, but it is hard to be sure that you are clicking in exactly the same square because they are so small.)

As soon as you place your settler's wagon quickly hit pause (the [P] key, unless you have remapped it), so you can take stock of your settlers and the contents of your wagon. You have a lot of planning to do before you actually start sending your settlers off to their tasks.

Next time: looking at your starting resources.

Why Timber and Stone?

I realize that most people who might read this blog are those that have already purchased the game, so they probably don't need to be convinced about whether to try it out.

Timber and Stone has elements of both old-school Real Time Strategy (RTS) games like Warcraft (no not World of Warcraft, but rather the original), Starcraft, Command & Conquer, or Age of Empires, and sandbox building games like Minecraft, but really is not either. The player can:

• Controls several individuals (eight to start), but his control is imperfect. Sometimes the little buggers have a mind of their own.
• Assign each individual to a profession, which can be changed as desired. (Supposedly changing their profession will have an effect of some sort in the future. For now it largely just causes a delay before they start new tasks.)
• Designate tasks to be performed by each profession. Some tasks can be performed by more than one profession, but usually not.
• Designate that the individual carry some sort of special equipment that they would not normally carry.
• Adjust some factors that alter their behavior, such as: how tired they get before they go to sleep; how refreshed they must be before they awake; or how much they will carry before they are too overloaded with weight and much drop something. One area that cannot be easily controlled is when, how often, or how much an individual eats.
• Build any structure of most any dimension or configuration they can imagine, given some limitations such as the game being voxel-based (i.e. blocky), the map having a minimum and maximum height, and there are a finite number of resources on the map. This is the Minecraft-like aspect of the game. The player indicates where blocks or items should go and the individuals perform the actual task of placing or building them there.
• Craft items, such as weapons, armor, tools, storage, furniture, lighting sources, and so on. The crafting recipes are indicated within the game's interface, so no need to look at a Wiki or add a mod that shows you the recipes in game.
• 4X or eXplore, eXploit, eXpand, and eXterminate.
• Okay, so maybe exploring is limited due to the map size, but you will find that you are constantly patrolling the map as you rid yourself of invaders and look for critical resources. (Patrolling is probably more appropriate, but it does not have an "X" in it.)
• Exploiting the resources of the map to survive and thrive is key. In fact, managing your resources is critical and many are non-renewable.
• You will find yourself always expanding your settlement as you add more storage, beds, houses, walls, and towers to accommodate the new migrants to the settlement and claim more of the map to keep it free from invaders.
• Survival is an important aspect of the game as you must not only build your settlement to the point of self-sufficiency but you must also do this all while fending off goblins, wolves, skeletons, necromancers, and spiders.

Because you take basic resources – timber and stone, essentially – and build a settlement in a hostile countryside, there are numerous basic strategies open to the player. That is what I hope to explore in future blog posts.

Start of a new blog

In the past, all of my gaming blogs have been about board or miniatures games; I haven't done one specifically about computer gaming, much less a single computer game. So it would seem like doing a blog about a single game would be risky, as I might tire of the game (inevitable) or run out of material. Well, I see Timber and Stone as one of those games, like Sid Meier's Civilization, that have a very high replay value simply because there are so many strategies to try.

So, what will this blog be about? As a start, some of the lessons I have learned about the quirks of the game. Although some might call them bugs, to me they are issues that you have to deal with. Once you understand them, you can try and mitigate some of the problems they create.

Secondly will be some of the strategies I have tried, summaries of how they have worked out, and some of the challenges you will face in trying to use them.

Finally, there will be a bit of "how to" with the game, some of the little tricks I have picked up on from playing the game, experimenting, and watching others play on YouTube. As I am now experimenting with video, I may produce a few of my own YouTube videos, although I am still unsure about whether I would do a "Let's Play" type of video series. I prefer making tutorials.

At the time of this writing, Timber and Stone is at version 1.5.2. Until I indicate otherwise, that is the version of the game that I will be referring to. (You can also see the version number reference in each blog post's tags).