Quick Links
Focus On One Project At A Time
Always Have More Housing Than You Need
Move Forager Work Zones With The Seasons
Plant Trees For Renewable Wood
Expect Raiders In Year Seven
Trading Posts Take Time
Clay Before Iron
Storehouses Can't Hold Logs Or Stone
Farthest Frontier is a very satisfying game, but it can be daunting for new players. New challenges seem to spring up from nowhere, and the game has very little in the way of tutorials or guidance. Whether it's due to raiders, crop blight, or a scary new disease, the settlement is always one misstep away from disaster.
Related: The Best City-Building Games Of All Time
Through trial, error, and perseverance, we've come up with some helpful tips for keeping your town well-supplied, healthy, and growing. Farthest Frontier is the kind of game where you need to be ready for anything, so read on to find out how!
Farthest Frontier is currently in early access. The contents of this guide are subject to change as the game continues its development process.
Focus On One Project At A Time
As your town grows, your Villagers will take on specialized jobs that produce, transport, and refine resources. This is necessary for the settlement to prosper, but each skilled worker is one less Laborer or Builder for carrying out basic tasks. Having too many resources tagged for extraction or buildings awaiting construction means your Villagers will try to do everything at once, effectively getting nothing done.
For this reason, the best approach is to focus on getting one thing done at a time. Whatever your current project - exploiting a new resource, for example, or leveling up your Town Center - try breaking it down into steps. Gather all the raw materials you need, then place the building site.
If a building site would cover a resource, that resource will be highlighted in yellow. Villagers will automatically harvest the resource to make room for the building if it's placed there, usually putting the yield directly toward construction!
For especially long-term projects like walling in the entire city or creating a profitable new industry, you may need to set goals for individual seasons or years. In these cases, don't be afraid to put your main objective on hold so that you can put out fires, both literally and figuratively.
Related: The Best Mods For Surviving Mars
Always Have More Housing Than You Need
New Villagers will only come to live in your settlement if there is room for them to do so. This means you need empty housing and a sufficient surplus of food to grow your population. The nature of the game is such that you ideally want your population growing at all times, so your town should always have empty houses into which newcomers can move.
It's a good idea to have a lot of available housing, since new Villagers who immediately settle into specialized jobs won't expand your pool of Laborers and Builders. This can lead to stagnation if there aren't enough people to chop wood and break down rocks. Whenever you build new housing, try building one or two more Shelters than you actually need so that the extra immigrants keep the town's wheels turning.
Related: The Best Sandbox Games
Move Forager Work Zones With The Seasons
Nature isn't always cooperative; as nice as it would be for your Foragers to be able to gather everything they need from a single work zone, that may not be the case. Luckily, since foraged goods are seasonal you can maximize the output of Forager Shacks with a little micromanagement.
Look for a circular icon in the upper left corner of the Forager Shack's window when you have the building selected. This allows you to move the building's work zone. When its current targets are grayed out, either due to being empty or out-of-season, simply instruct the Forager to gather somewhere more useful. You still want the new location to be nearby, but foraged resources are common enough that this shouldn't be a problem.
You can move the work zones of other buildings, too; try this with a Fishing Shack to exploit a shoal you couldn't quite reach, or moving the focus of a Hunter's Cabin to follow a migrating herd of deer.
Related: Non-Survival Games Where The Temperature Can Kill You
Plant Trees For Renewable Wood
If you look under the Decorations heading in the build menu, you'll discover that you can plant trees for one Gold apiece. This is a very economical way to create renewable sources of Wood, especially near dedicated Work Camps set to only chop mature trees.
Oak trees provide the best return on your investment, as they can yield up to eleven Logs each when fully grown; nine from the tree itself and two from the stump it leaves behind. If you're in a pinch you can also plant then immediately harvest oak trees for four Logs each. That's a better rate than you'll see from any Trader, and since the settlement will always need wood it's a great use of your tax income.
Related: Surviving The Aftermath: Best Crops
Expect Raiders In Year Seven
On Trailblazer difficulty (the middle setting), your settlement will experience its first raid in the seventh year. Since you're starting from nothing, that's less time than you need to mount proper defenses; expect to lose some Gold and maybe some lives. If you have a Market up and running by the end of year six, you can use the Gold income to finance at least one Lookout Tower and mitigate the damage somewhat.
Since there's no way of knowing where the raiders will come from, your best bet is to build the Lookout Towernear your Town Center with coverage over critical storehouses. When the raiders arrive, immediately ring the alarm bell at the Town Center to signal that your Villagers should take cover. Villagers hiding in the Town Center will also fire arrows at the attackers from within.
Hunters are better in a fight than any other Villagers you'll have at this early stage in the game, but can't take more than one raider without a serious risk of death. Have them pick off any raiders who manage to escape the Lookout Tower.
If you prefer a less violent city-building experience, you can always turn on Pacifist Mode when you start a new game. This disables raiders entirely.
Related: Cities: Skylines - How To Manage Traffic Flow
Trading Posts Take Time
As useful as Trading Posts are (and they are very useful indeed), they're not a magical one-stop shop for resource fixing. You can only buy and sell goods if a Trader is in town, and each Trader peddles different wares. Your current visitor may not be interested in the goods you have for sale, or may not have the key resource you need. On top of that, goods need to be brought to and from the Trading Post, potentially causing you to miss a sale if your Villagers are busy elsewhere.
The best use of a Trading Post is to unload excess goods, especially food that will otherwise spoil, and re-invest the money in your town. Be on the lookout for good deals on rare resources - they're almost always worth the buy if the price is right!
Related: Surviving The Aftermath: Everything You Need To Know About The New Alliances DLC
Clay Before Iron
Once you've built a Wagon Shop you can start exploiting more advanced natural resources, notably Clay and Iron Ore. Both are essential for your town's overall growth, but you should always build Clay Pits first.
Clay is necessary for several quality-of-life buildings such a Healers and Schools. The sooner you can stockpile it, the sooner you can reduce your mortality rate and increase your overall efficiency by raising educated Villagers.
Iron Ore, on the other hand, isn't much good until you can smelt it, which requires leveling up your Town Center to tier three. It's worth having a stockpile ready to go once you upgrade, but that need is secondary to the more immediate concerns that Clay alleviates.
Related: Games To Play If You Love Two Point Hospital
Storehouses Can't Hold Logs Or Stone
At first glance, the Storehouse seems like a direct upgrade from the Stockyard; they have a larger capacity and can hold a greater diversity of goods. The building's description even says that it can hold all sorts of things. That's not quite correct, though, and building Storehouses without also adding Stockyards will grind your economy to a halt.
Taking a closer look at the Storehouse's screen, you'll notice something is missing - Storehouses can store many raw materials, but Logs and Stone are not among them. If you just build a single Stockyard to unlock Storehouses, your Laborers will spend much their time lugging their goods to that one Stockyard for lack of anywhere else to put them. Always make sure your Laborers have Stockyards near their work area to drop off their resources!
Next: Two Point Campus: Relateable Things Every Player Does
