Getting Started

This page outlines the basic gameplay mechanics in ***Thea: The Awakening***. For a more detailed discussion, see the Strategy & Tips page.

## Starting a New Game

The first step is to choose which god you'll play as.

After selecting a god, the player sees a small area uncovered from the fog of war with the settlement "Ostoja" in the middle and an expedition next to it. By clicking one of them, you get access to a radial menu, which handles the whole management of settlements and expeditions.

To survive the first several turns, it is crucial to start gathering some materials, especially food and fuel, which will allow you to feed and warm all your villagers.

## Inventory

On this screen, the player can go through all villagers and items that the selected group possesses. The player can dismantle or destroy unused items. Dismantling returns some of the materials used to craft that item back to your supply.

After getting familiar with managing the village, you can select your expedition and explore the world.

## Equipment

*Main article: Equipment*
The player can check the villagers' equipment by clicking on the settlement (or expedition) equipment icon. Then, choose a villager and move the desired item by dragging it to the proper slot. If the equipment weight is higher than the carrying capacity of the equipped villager, the expedition's movement speed will decrease.

The player can also check all of the items the selected group (settlement/expedition) has by clicking the inventory button on the radial menu.

When tasks are created and the settlement is ready to fulfill the basic needs of its inhabitants, then it is a wise idea to check if all villagers in "Ostoja" and those in the expedition are fully equipped with items that accentuate their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.

### Weapon Types

* **Axes** are straightforward and simply deal more Damage compared to other weapon types.
* **Swords** and **Shields** both have the Shielding attribute, which grants bonus Armour when playing that character's card, or adds its value to another character by using the Protect Ally tactical ability.
* **Hammers** and **Clubs** have the Blunt Damage attribute: if you kill an opponent's card and not all damage was used to finish it, any damage that was leftover will be dealt to the next target.
* **Spears** and **Staffs** have the Polearm attribute: if you enter the battlefield after an enemy, you deal half Damage to that enemy, and then move before them in initiative.

## Expedition

Managing expeditions is handled by the radial menu with one exception: there is of course the move option. Whenever the player chooses to move an expedition - frames for its movement range appear with the movement point cost under the cursor. Having an expedition try to move onto a tile with enemy groups or lairs will trigger an encounter with them, but quests and special locations require standing on the tile and activating it by clicking on the "search" button (question mark) on the radial menu.

While exploring Thea, remember that during the day it may be safe enough to move from one point to another without being bothered by monsters. However, during the night, when monsters are more aggressive, expeditions will likely be forced to defend themselves. When visibility is at its poorest, you might not see enemies who are in adjacent tiles and you may trigger encounters unexpectedly should you move at this time.

## Food and Fuel

*See also: Food, Fuel*
Food at the beginning is just a material that can be gathered and consumed to avoid starvation, but later in the game, when you have access to variety of different kinds of food including crafted ones, food becomes a vital element of survival and success in Thea. For each different type of food the group has access to, it gets specific bonuses. The range and scope of bonuses improve as variety increases. It is also important to craft cooked/roasted/baked food since the weight per food item decreases (most of them only 1 kg!), thus making them much more efficient for storage, which in turns opens up room for more food types and food bonuses.

Fuel is consumed by villagers when they are in the settlement or a camp. If there is no available fuel, the progress speed for gathering, crafting, and construction tasks is halved, and wounded characters do not gain the normal recovery bonus.

There are plenty of different kinds of food and fuel that the villagers can use to keep the settlement and its inhabitants working at maximum efficiency. (There is a small icon that will show you which materials are Food or Fuel items, and you can filter the inventory list to see these.) Usually, unless you are running very low, keep the valuable ones for crafting. To change which goods are consumed, go into the settlement or the expedition's inventory and then click on the "Manage Supplies" button. There, materials can be allowed or disallowed for consumption.

By default, *every new* food type and fuel material is allowed to be consumed, so check which supplies the villagers are using often. Alternatively, you can uncheck the "Allow use of new items" box so that new materials are disallowed by default. Note that every time you re-form an expedition, "Allow use of new items" will be checked again, and all materials will be allowed.

## Gathering

*See also: Materials*
To gather materials the player needs to enter the village and go to the gather section in the production tab. There, tasks can be created and Villagers assigned to them. The most skilled person on a task will provide full rating from his or her skill to the task progress. Assistants provide only half of their rating.

Each task has its production cost and amount of gathered materials per production cycle. After assigning a villager to a task it calculates the time in turns to finish the whole production cycle, which is shown on the resource icon. The player can set desired number of production cycles or put them into loop, which will help in the overall managing.

When the village gathers enough materials, you can craft items or construct buildings and it works with almost the same mechanic as gathering.

## Quests and Random Events

*See Category:Quests*
Events may occur during the player's turn when an expedition is moving or during the monsters' turn. In both situations, the player gets information on what is happening and choices about how to handle it. Some dialogue options may be hidden and will be available only when a villager has the proper ability to unlock it. For example, knowledge about folklore is needed to know how to handle mystical creatures such as vampires or ghosts, while magical knowledge is needed to start rituals and banish ghosts.

Quests starts as events, where the player gets information and some dialogue options, but after this there is an additional goal, which requires player action and usually is connected with a place on the map: a herbalist's house that will cure sick villagers or a a group of quest monsters that the player has to meet. Each positively solved event or quest give a reward, which is always experience and sometimes items, materials, research experience or custom rewards.

From time to time, the player will get experience, which will be accumulated automatically and presented on the right side of the screen as general experience and research experience.

Every 10 turns world difficulty raises by 1 to maximum of 10 after 100 turn – when dragons appear on the map.

## Research

*Main article: Research*
You start the game with a single Advancement Point. More are gained through quests and crafting.

Spending your Advancement Points wisely is crucial to success. So what can you do with the one point at the beginning? A good option is to unlock materials required to carry out the first crafting projects and there aren’t many crafting and gathering tools. If you have good starting materials, you could think about unlocking a crafting recipe, which will allow you to equip your group with better gear. Usually spending that point on a new construction option is a bad choice. Although the bonuses from buildings are always nice (especially chance of attracting more people to the village), building them with basic resources gives little or no research experience. If you are lucky you might find some building materials which for sure will help.

## Crafting

*Main article: Crafting*
Recipes are grouped into categories, such as Light Armor. You begin the game with a handful of basic categories unlocked, and you unlock additional categories through research. Crafting is also the main way you gain new Advancement Points for research.

Focus mostly on recipes that you are able to craft right away, and with time move as fast as possible to those that will enhance your survivability, like swords and shields (defensive combination) or hammers (aggressive tactic). Those two tactics are most efficient in lowering damage done to your people and increasing chance that you will kill opponents first.

Don't worry *too* much about food variety early on, since crafting food does not earn you Advancement Points like crafting equipment does.

## Construction

*Main article: Construction*
You begin the game with no buildings built, and only one construction blueprint unlocked--the Pasture. You will need to use research to unlock more building blueprints.

If you are playing the tutorial, you will get a quest early on to build a building. Building a Pasture is a reasonable choice.

## Materials

*Main article: Materials*
Materials can be divided into material types:

* **Wood***:* Good material for construction, shields and weapons.
* **Fiber***:* Used mostly in gathering tools and ranged weapons.
* **Metal***:* Outstanding material for weapons, heavy armor, and shields.
* **Stone***:* Primary used in construction, but also very good in heavy weapons, especially top tier materials.
* **Leather:** Very good material in crafting light and medium armor, also good secondary material in other recipes.
* **Thread:** Used mostly in gathering tools, clothing and light armor, and a bit in ranged weapons and spears.
* **Bone:** Used in many recipes.
* **Gems:** Can be used in many weapon and armor recipes to make a much lighter-weight version of the object, plus grants a random skill bonus when used this way. Are also used in jewellery.

The ability to gather higher tier materials must be unlocked with research. Unlocking a new material will add 5 units of the specific material to your settlement, which can boost research progress and improve equipment crafting. Use these wisely, because the unlocked material appears somewhere on the map and it might be far away, so getting more of it could be quite difficult.