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).