Getting Started

This short getting started tutorial is for Survival Single Player and assumes you are going to work toward designing and building your own city with a money based economy. Other tutorials will come out later that address other methods of playing such as finding and repairing the abandoned city or creating a city specialized in a single industry.

After finding a good location and getting yourself established, you should try to collect some leather or wool and some string so you can make a few coin pouches, which will get you your first achievement "Elected Mayor" and a City Planner Book for referencing later. Your first few industries will run just fine without coin pouches and you can add them at any time later but the sooner you give them coin pouches, the sooner they can start making money.

A good first industry to make is a carrot or potato Farm because it can supply you with food and most other industries will require food also. An oak tree Lumber Mill is also good to get started early because it can eat the apples it collects, and a Fishery will provide food and feed itself also. Don't get carried away and start too many other industries until you have a good food supply.

Next, you may want to start some resource collecting industries such as Mineshafts or Quarries to collect some building materials and coal. Now that you have a number of industries running, you will probably get tired of supplying them all with tools, so now is a good time to make a Carpenter. The Carpenter will supply industries within 80 blocks of itself with stone tools.

Start to think about what materials you will use to construct you first building. Now is a good time to set up more manufacturing industries such as a Craftsman and a Stonemason as they can produce a lot of building materials you might need such as brick, stone and glass. By now you could also benefit from a Distributor to help move raw materials from the resource collection industries to the manufacturing industries. Distributors also have a radius of 80 blocks and after you place a coin pouch and a few materials in its inventory it will begin to buy those materials from industries that supply them, and then the manufacturing industries can buy the materials from the Distributor.

About now is when I would probably start a Ranch. It can be started earlier but since it requires a lot of food for the animals, it's good to have a well established Farm(s) and a few Distributors. Also, the products from the Ranch are not as essential earlier in the game.

Finally, it's time to make your first building. An Office takes the least amount of materials and will allow you to start selling some of your excess supply to the global market for some extra cash. Place a coin pouch in the Office inventory along with the items that it requires to customize the look of the building. Do you want it made of brick, wood, stone, etc. The Office will collect investments from surrounding industries and buy the materials it needs for construction from Distributors. Hopefully, your Distributors can supply the materials and if not, then you should spend some time adding/moving/adjusting your industries until you get everything working smoothly.

Congratulations! Your first building is complete and now you want it to do something. You can house other industries on each floor or you can make it your residence. It can also make money or get you supplies that may be difficult to get otherwise. You will want to take a trip out into the world now and get some emeralds. You should have enough items to do some trading at a village. Create a Buyer and/or Seller and place it on the ground floor of the Office and place a coin pouch and items in the inventory. The Office can now buy items from your industries and export them to the global market and/or sell items that it imports from the global market to your industries.

You can also use the Buyer and Seller to create your own player shop to supply your city with needed items. Maybe you have collected quartz and glowstone from the nether and you want to sell it to your industries.

As you progress and grow, you will want to build Blacksmiths, Bakeries and Textiles and probably place them in their own dedicated buildings. You can start to lay out Roads and Intersections. You can make Factories, Large Factories, Towers, and Large Towers. When you have a good number of buildings making money then you will want to place a Tax Collector to rake in some of that money for yourself.

Since each player will have their own vision of how their city will be, it is hard to give specific advice once you have grown to a certain level. So, I hope this short generic getting started tutorial is enough for now. More tutorials will come in the future. Have fun!