Quick Guide

Rise To Ruins has many mechanics that you should familiarize with through playing. Here are some tips and best practices.

(NOTE: this page is based on version 31e)

## Setting up

Create your profile and start a new game in the main menu. Pick your preferred difficulty mode (Traditional or Survival are recommended) and choose a region to start your first village.

## Interface

Now is a good time to get to know parts of the interface:

The game has multiple interface panels, listing them from top-left to bottom-right:

### Population panel

The top-left panel shows you the current population of the village at the top. The number beneath is the number of villagers that have housing, versus your total housing capacity. The house with the sword represents the number guards that are housed in your barracks. The next number is the amount of ancillaries you have, and the number beneath that is the total amount of buildings you have, versus your allowed number of buildings. The final number shows how many children are in your village.

### Inventory and Spells panel

The top panel shows you what items and resources you currently have stored. It also shows your essence bar and spells, which you can cast at any time given you have enough essence. On the far right side of the inventory panel, it lists how many gold coins you have, how much clean water you have ready, and the amount of essence you have stored in your essence collectors.

### Weather and time panel

The top-right panel shows you 6 pieces of information about your current world:

* temperature (top half-circle)
* season (text)
* game speed (text with buttons)
* day (text)
* year (text)
* time of day (bottom half-circl and text)

The bar above the season shows how cold/hot it currently is, with small marks showing if its very cold, dangerously cold, very hot, or dangerously hot. The bar above the time of day is the time elapsed in that current time of the day. This is not a clock, the bar resets each time a new part of the day begins, which consists of: Dawn, Morning, Midday, Evening, Dusk, Night.

### Jobs panel

The left panel shows all available jobs in the village. The first line contains increase/decrease workers for that job, the desired amount / maximal amount of workers.

The second line shows the actual amount of workers, and theis sprites. You can decide how busy are your villagers on each job based on their sprites actions.

If you set the desired amount of workers beyond the current workforce, the text will turn red to indicate that.

### Construction panel

The right panel shows the all building and groups them by categories:

* Civics
* Defense
* Food and water
* Harvesting
* Housing
* Lighting
* Magic
* Manufacturing
* Refining
* Storage
* Walls

When you hover over a building, a window will show you a short description, as well as the construction cost.

### Harvest panel

The bottom-left panel lets you designate resources for harvesting. Its buttons are:

* Modify brush size/shape
* Harvest wood (hotkey 6)
* Harvest rock (hotkey 7)
* Harvest food and water (hotkey 8)
* Harvest crystal (hotkey 9)

### Console panel

The bottom panel shows you game information, no interaction here.

### Terrain panel

The bottom-right panel lets you instruct your builders and waymakers. Its buttons are:

* Pause building (hotkey o) - Stop building's operation
* Dismantle buildings (hotkey i) - destroy building and salvage resources
* Dig a hole (hotkey q) - holes will be filled with water when it's raining
* Create or upgrade roads
* Dismantle roads
* Destroy terrain (hotkey 0) - clear tiles so you'll be able to build buildings / roads.

## Placing your camp

When first starting a new map your first task is to place your Camp - look for a place with the 5 main resources of the game: **Wood**, **Rock**, **Crystal**, **Food** and **Water**.

The camp is the core of your village, and acts as a storage place for materials. Once completed, it also increases the total number of buildings you are allowed to build up to 6, and future upgrades will increase this number further.

As you place the village center, villagers start to teleport nearby along with some stones and wood. Your villagers will construct it without further orders. After it is constructed, you should focus on housing and food. Construct some houses (Housing->Housing in the buildings menu), a farm (Food and water->Farm) and a well (Food and water->Well). Basic house accommodates 4 villagers, but you can upgrade it to support more.

## Gathering resources

To construct buildings, your builders need resources. You can instruct them where to gather those resources with the buttons on the bottom-left of the screen or the hotkeys 6-9.

Designate some wood (hotkey 6), stone (hotkey 7) and crystal (hotkey 9) to be harvested, your villagers will automatically harvest the necessary resources and use them for building. Try to gather resources close to the construction site to minimize time wasted transporting them.

## Managing workers

When the buildings are complete, you should assign villagers to work in them. Use the left panel to transfer some villagers from Builders to Farmers and Water masters (one of each should suffice). Also, you should designate some wild food for harvesting (hotkey 8).

The Water Master will gather water from the well and provide it to the farm. The Farmers will harvest designated wild food and replant it in the farm.

## Essence and Spells

As the villagers chop wood, you've probably noticed small green sparks on the ground, which follow your cursor when you hold it close. These sparks are essence, which fuels the spells and buildings you'll use to grow and defend your village in the coming nights.

Essence you gather fills up your influence bar, an allows you to cast spells (both offensive and defensive). Notable spells:

* Grab - move items, harvest resources yourself, hotkey ` (above the tab key).
* Motivate land - regrows harvested wood/food/crystals tiles.
* Illuminate - Lights up an area.
* Healing Aura - heals villagers.
* Summon Holy Golem - Summons a defensive golem who would attack enemies.
* Meteor / Magic Bolts - Damages enemies.

## Expanding

Build some more building based on your preferences (lumber shack / mining facility for dedicated lumberjacks/miners, rain catcher for extra water, way maker shack for path creation...). When you run out of building slots - you should either upgrade your camp (choose the camp and click 'upgrade' in the bottom panel) or build an ancillary (another storage building with a new workers type - Organizers).

Your main method of increasing population is through nomads. Whenever you see a message about nomads - open the minimap, locate them and use recall/grab spells to get them to your camp safely.

## Defending

Enemies will spawn and attack your village every night (on Traditional - starting from the second night). Unarmed villagers are less effective than dedicated guards and towers, so prepare your defenses before the night falls. A bow tower (Defense > Towers > Bow Tower) should suffice for the first night, but it requires ballistae bolts which are produced by the bowyer (Manufacturing > Bowyer).

For the bowyer to produce bolts - you should select it and browse the left panel - choose how many bolts to make or maintain (maintaining 5 is reasonable). Also, don't forget to assign a villager to be a fletcher.

Consider building wood fence or stone walls to surround your village and only leave a small opening for villagers and monsters to enter and exit. If monsters don't have a clear path to your village center, they will destroy walls and buildings to reach it. If there's a clear path, they will not destroy any walls. This is convenient, as they can then be led down convoluted mazes while being shot at by your bow tower. A wall maze and some strategically placed towers will increase your chances of survival considerably.

Another type of defense is guards - you can build barracks (Defense > Guards and Golems > Barracks) and assign villages to become guards, or create an essence collector (Magic > Essence collector) and crystal golem combobulator and wait for it to produce golems with supplied essence.

Good luck, and have fun!