Basics

In *Farthest Frontier*, you are leading a band of people eager to start a new life at the edge of civilization. In order to do that, you will have to provide for their basic needs, such as food and shelter. The first winter will quickly decide whether your town prospers…or perishes.

## Starting a New Town

When starting a new Town, you will be presented with a number of game settings so you can customize your experience. The first and foremost is, of course, the name of your future town. For more information on other settings, stop by the World Generation and Game Difficulties pages.

Once you are satisfied with your setup, you will be ready to embark into Farthest Frontier’s wilderness!

## Placing the Town Center

Once the game has loaded, you will be greeted by the wilderness your villagers have explored. It is now up to you to decide where they will settle and begin their life in the frontier in earnest.

Pay particular attention to nearby resources, such as food (ex. berry bushes, fish, deer), ores (ex. iron, gold, coal) and threats (ex. boars, wolves). Your future town will have many growing needs, but it’s important to have the basics within reach.

Settling down near a mountain teeming with resources may seem like a great idea until the wolves nearby devour your people!

## Harvesting Resources

You’ve settled on a location, and now your people are ready to start construction. You may notice them already working hard to clear the build site for your future Town Center of any debris. That may not be enough materials to finish the structure though.

The simplest way to generate additional resources is to press the Harvest button on the bottom right of the screen (Default Hotkey: H). With this tool, you can drag select multiple trees and rocks and mark them for harvest. You can select individual objects for clearing as well by Left-clicking them, but that is less efficient and generally best saved for when you need precision.

Once resources are marked for harvest, watch as the villagers get right to chopping and mining them down into raw building materials. Your Town Center will be up and running in no time!

From here, the rest of the town is entirely up to you. Try placing some more buildings from the Build Menu (Default Hotkey: B), accessed from the bottom right of the screen. Be sure to provide for the basic needs of your villagers. The journey to the frontier will be short-lived without food and well-stocked shelters!

## Controls Basics

In order to navigate Farthest Frontier, you will need to learn basic controls. For that purpose, we strongly recommend playing with a Mouse and Keyboard setup.

The mouse Left-Click is used to select objects in the world and UI elements, while the keyboard offers a range of convenient hotkeys.

### Top HUD

The top of the screen has valuable information on your town at a glance, from the status of your people, to the seasons, and finally critical resources.

#### Left-Section

From the left-section, you can visit the Annual Report and Event Log and check on the various states of your people, including: Health, Population and Housing, Happiness, and Food stocks.

Pay close attention to this section, as it may give you an early indication of larger problems looming for your town.

#### Middle-Section

The middle-section displays the current season in the year. It’s important to plan ahead for each winter so your villagers can survive the harsh winter storms.

The icon on the left of the bar also offers insight as to the current weather conditions. Unusual weather, such as a heatwave, can trigger crop loss.

#### Right-Section

The right-section displays the resources currently in storage in your town. Logs, Firewood, Planks, Stone, Clay, Bricks and Gold form the foundation upon which your town is built and maintained, so it’s important to keep a healthy stock of resources. Running out of Firewood, for example, can quickly spell doom when winter arrives.

### Bottom-Right HUD

The bottom of the screen offers an array of useful menus and controls. Note that these can also be accessed directly through keyboard shortcuts:

* **Center** – centers the camera on the Town Center. Default hotkey: X.
* **Villager Professions** – opens the professions tab of the Town Center, where you can reassign the jobs your villagers are doing around town. Default hotkey: P.
* **Resources in Storage** – opens the resources tab of the Town Center, where you can see a complete summary of all resources stored within your town. Default hotkey: R.
* **Build** – opens the Building menu to place new structures. Default hotkey: B.
* **Harvest** – allows you to select resources such as trees and rocks for harvest. Default hotkey: H.
* **Clear** – allows you to drag-select resources and structures for clearing, removing them from the world. Default hotkey: C.
* **Walls** and Gates – opens the walls and gates management tool, allowing you to drag-select entire sections of walls and gates for repairs, upgrading or salvaging. Default Hotkey: Y.
* **Flatten** – allows you to place a special build site for flattening the terrain, which can make otherwise unbuildable areas become available for expanding your town. This is particularly useful in hilly locations. Default hotkey: T.
* **Road** – allows you to place dirt roads. These are also available from the Build menu. Default hotkey: N.
* **Explore** – allows you to place markers on the map for your villagers to explore. By doing so, villagers will uncover the fog and potentially reveal new resources. Default hotkey: E.

## Camera Controls

The game camera can be panned using either the mouse by holding down the right-button, or by pressing the WASD-keys on the keyboard.

Camera zoom is controlled by turning the mouse wheel, or by pressing = (equals) and –(minus) on the keyboard, by default. Camera rotation is controlled by pressing and holding the Middle mouse button.

## Game Speed

The game speed determines how fast the simulation runs. By default, the game runs at 1x speed, but you can reduce it to 1/2x speed or increase it to as much as 3x if you want time to pass by faster.

## Game Speed Controls

The game speed is controlled from the bottom left of the screen, but you can also use these default keyboard shortcuts: 1, 2, 3, 4, and Spacebar to adjust game speed and pause/unpause the game.

Note that the game speed resets back to 1x speed when raiders arrive.

## Other Controls

In addition to the above, there are some other miscellaneous controls which you may find helpful as you play:

## Widget Toggles

Widgets are icons that are displayed over structures, villagers and resources in the game. You can toggle the amount of information they provide or turn them off entirely, using shortcuts:

* Structure Widgets – icons displayed over structures to warn you about issues can be toggled with F2, by default.
* Villager Widgets – icons over villagers to warn you about status ailments can be toggled with F3, by default.
* Resource Widgets – icons over resources in the world and materials dropped by villagers can be toggled with F4, by default.

## Overlay Toggles

Overlays offer in-depth information about the land, for more information on these overlays, see the Overlays page. Overlays can be toggled using G, I, and F, by default.

## Toggle UI

You can toggle all of the UI elements on the screen by pressing ] (right-bracket) on the keyboard. This is an excellent way to capture screenshots of your splendid town.