How to Build a Town--a quick guide to getting started

HOW TO BUILD A TOWN

1.       First, you need to build a Solace (or you can use the Solace you started with).  Solaces have to be at least 200 meters (0.2 km) apart, and I advise picking a flat open spot somewhere in the T0 zone.

2.      Press T to open the town menu, and it should look like this:

NOTE:  Move closer to a Solace if the menu looks empty, like this:

Click on “Show power” (left side of menu), which will show you how far your Solace can reach.  Town buildings have to fit inside the Solace’s control zone.

You’ll see that the control zone for the Solace starts out pretty small.  It’s a good size for Outposts, but not big enough for a fully developed town.  You’ll need to upgrade the Solace.

3.      Next step is to Prepare for Upgrading the Solace.  Upgrading the Solace will trigger a Demon attack.  It’s not too bad at first, but each upgrade gets worse, so it’s a good idea to set up defenses at the beginning, to prepare for the future.

You build a few Wooden Obelisks to defend your Solace.  Obelisks act like automatic ‘sentry guns’ in other games.  These Wooden Obelisks are crafted outdoors, using the normal build menu (‘B” by default).  Most people put a ring of Wooden Obelisks around the Solace, maybe 6 or 8—but you can decide.

The Solace won’t be destroyed by demons (I’m not positive about this), but for sure the upgrade will fail if enough demons get through.  Upgrading a Solace costs light, and you’ll lose all that light if the upgrade fails.

Here's a Solace, protected by a ring of Obelisks:

4.      Once the Wooden Obelisks are in place (facing outwards), it’s time to upgrade.  The Obelisks have a thin green line sticking out from one side, and that shows you the direction the Obelisks will shoot.  You only see the green line when you place the Obelisk.

Upgrade the Solace from level 1 to level 2, and the control zone for the Solace will be big enough to start with.  You can easily reposition all the town buildings, there’s no cost to do this, so you can move buildings around later.

5.      Once the Solace is upgraded, build a Storehouse.  The Storehouse comes with a single crate, which can hold 100 items.  The harvesters in your town will fill up the Storehouse crate, and you can add more crates to it, to increase the storage.  You can stuff the Storehouse full of crates if you want to.

6.      Second, build a Forager.  The Forager will feed 3 townspeople, and can be upgraded to feed more.  The townspeople don’t starve to death yet, but that could change with any update.

7.      The most important person to add to the starter town will be the Carpenter.  You’ll need a Carpenter to upgrade almost EVERYTHING.   Look at the Town menu (press T) and you see a Carpenter is listed under “Hamlet”, so you need to upgrade your Outpost to a Hamlet.  You do this by building a Trader, and once the Trader is placed, your little Outpost is now a Hamlet.

8.       Choose the Trader, and read the requirements to build.  You need two more harvesters in your town, before you can get a Trader.  The Forager doesn’t count as a harvester, because they just feed the town.  Choose whatever harvesters you want (Reapers, Loggers, Miners, Hunters, Quarriers, Siphoners are harvesters), and they’ll harvest stones, stalks, wood, whatever, and place it into the Storehouse crate(s) for you to collect.  (Note: The Trader doesn’t function yet.)

9.      Once you build the Trader, now you can build the Carpenter.  You’re supposed to build an Arable Farmer to feed the Hamlet, but they don’t starve if you don’t.

The Carpenter makes T0 Wooden Construction Supplies, and this lets you upgrade almost anything in the town.  This is a minimum town,  and will be a good starter town.

OUTPOSTS

You need to build a town, at least an Outpost, whenever you want to harvest a Spider Nest, Limestone, Hornet Wax, or a few other resources.  An outpost needs a Solace, a Storehouse, a Forager, and a harvester.  Everything has to fit into the control zone of the Solace, so I place the Solace, the storehouse, Forager and harvester all close together, right next to the resource being harvested.

Interact with the sign in front of the harvester and assign them the item you want them to gather! You will need to upgrade the harvester with three T0 Wooden Construction Supplies (crafted by a Carpenter) before the harvester can be assigned to high-level resources like Spider Silk and Hornet Wax.

Here's the minimum Outpost for gathering a resource like Spider Silk. There's a Solace, Storehouse, Forager, and a harvester (spider silk requires a Reaper for harvesting). The white mound is the spider nest which produces spider silk.