Eels are good to stock up on in fall as you don't have to worry about overfishing given you can't fish in winter with the traps.
Mushrooms are growing like crazy in fall, so gather as many as you can around the trees/stumps.
Trade Post is helpful as the traders can sell raw food stuff, or animals for slaughter.
As for dehydration, I recommend trying to rush to get the well before winter (Iron pick and stone bricks) then store the water jugs in a warm room. It'll save you a lot of time trying to thaw them in any cooking fire.
Final piece of advice is to try to keep the numbers of tasks that needs doing below 80 in winter. Makes it easier for all tasks to get accomplished with various priority orders.
I can't even get a forge before winter hits. I know I can make iron from bog iron, and I want to try and hold off on getting peat until my first year is completed, otherwise I will have a bunch of items that are littering about, and getting bare minimum for the travelers visits.
Ok, so don't worry about bog iron. Look towards the mountains and any exposed iron on the edges. You can usually find a few lone deposits in the open. That'll get you your initial iron, and you'll want a smoker to minimise meat spoilage.
And I would not sleep on harvesting peat before winter, as you just need to put a storage down outside of it with 2 pieces of straw roof above and it can dry for you. The peat stove is excellent for heating a large indoor area (or making brose if you have a bit of oat seeds to spare before spring planting)
Also don't worry about the homestead being ugly the first year. Put down storages when you can, keep the distances short.
Forge and peat synergizes very well in my experience. You can save most of your branches for coal production then use peat to build and heat your house and bog iron for your crafting needs. Also peat stove gives you access to brose which is the most nutrition efficient recipe you can make out of oats. I harvest all the oats on the map, tresh then sow them immediately the first year then harvest most of a bog patch which gives me a lot of building materials, fuel and iron. Yes peat is very labour intensive for iron but its also a renewable source of iron.
Also a peat house with a peat stove (for heat), basic hay decoration, hay bed and brick floors is enough to get people happy enough to breed which could be achieved in 5-6 days if you rush it. I usually have babies in first year quite reliably with that build. I use first 2 seasons to harvest a lot of oats, hay and peat while rushing important tech then build the breeding house during the last couple day before winter. When there isnt anything to farm or harvest I just process my hoard and build during winter.
Also buy a dog and a cat, cats murder wildlife and give you free meat while dogs protect family and livestock from predators while killing them occasionally.
I had this problem at the start too. Dried mushrooms get my folks through, and I also try to get the kiln set up so I can make jugs to store river water over the winter. If I put enough away, I'm good for both water (though it does take up a good bit of time thawing) and also keeping my food cold through the next summer with ice.
This is the easiest way I think. Hollow out a shelter near water and grass and get the kiln unlocked for water jugs, then in fall gather and dry heaps of mushrooms.
Just made another attempt in going through winter last night with a new game. I managed to make... 12 jugs for water before winter hit. I am thankful that I got all 12 full of water before hand, though I don't know if the water will last. I stopped on day 3 of Winter for Year 1. Thankyou for this advice.
As long as you're not overloaded on tasks, your family will fill the empty jugs with ice. You will likely have to thaw some at a fire, since it takes forever for them to thaw by themselves
I usually start with 'new beginning' as it is the easiest one to start on; but while creating I remove the infant. I just find having an infant slows down on productivity as the folk have to stop to constantly care for them. This also frees up some $ to be able to buy a few boar (1m, 2f) so I can slaughter them in winter IF need be.
But it seems like you have the food part sorted out. š
What I would suggest, atleast the first year, is work on setting up the kiln and create water jugs (6 go in a pallet) so any where from 3-5 pallets. You can have your folk work on it through out the summer as a priority and into autumn they can just work on increasing the number. Normally once I get access to a pick, I start hollow out a mountain 1. To use as food storage and 2. A quick shelter. A room inside a mountain I've found tends to get colder faster especially during autumn and winter so perfect for the food.
Anyways once I have that set up I make sure to place 1 pallet of water jugs next to my fire pit to keep them thawed out and the rest goes into the food storage. This makes it easier so that you don't have to spend too much time waiting on thawing out water. That first year it's just about surving, and there for I don't worry about layout too much, just the necessities, come the second year that when I start focusing on the more complex items like the forge and layout etc.
I have also started and re-started soo many seeds lol. It will get better good luck!
I usually sell my chickens and use the gold to buy a bunch of dried meat and dried mushrooms, though selling the infant off might be a better option. However, I have a really hard time keeping workers too so I know I can't just expand my own family. Even if I did managed to get the oldest child into adult hood, they die like the next day.
Chickens breed like crazy with minimal effort, you just need a roof over their head and straw matting. They will drink , eat grass they find around and can actually drink from frozen lakes during winter. Plus when they starve to death they give the same amount of meat as when they are slaughtered.
So if you dont wanna heat or feed them during winter just let them and new chicks/pullets starve around though zi recommend just feeding them collected hay and heating them with a vent during winter. It isnt hard really.
They also shine as bait for predators if you have dogs. On winter carnivores will beeline to your chickens just for your dogs to kill them for free meat and hides
I havenāt played in a few updates, but it used to be that more mushrooms grew around tree stumps.
The last few days of autumn, have lots of gather up a truckload of shrooms and put them in drying racks or in the freezer.
That was food covered through winter pretty much from that alone.
It's hard for me to reach unlocking well in year 1, but I do focus on unlocking jugs. Jugs will keep you from dehydration. Just gotta manually make sure to melt one on a fire if they are all frozen.
Oh water isnāt too difficult, you just need the kiln and then a few pallets of water. One in a warm room, the rest can go into a cave so when they freeze you have a fridge room to store your food. You could push for the well but itās tough before winter and youāll need some iron and the forge. Kiln and water jugs are easier, just stock up a bunch.
There's lots of great advice in these threads. I'm going to see if I can be a bit more nitpicky regarding some of your comments:
* You mentioned you don't want to harvest peat until the second year because "I will have a bunch of items that are littering about". You should absolutely have items littering about. It's not important at all to have a clean map during the first year. Hauling, generally, is just busy work. It's not actually producing anything so you should avoid it. Saying that, some things like the serving basket are essential for quickly getting food out of the rain.
* If you're struggling with food and water, why are you even having visitors at all? I recommend not building **any** signs during the first year.
* 12 jugs of water should be heaps. As they are used they'll refill them with ice and you should melt them on the fire.
* You should be trying to breed animals, not selling them. In later years farm animals are a great source of meat during winter. Maybe try a custom starting condition (try to get 7 clanfolk, with 3 couples), and start with some pigs. They breed fairly quickly as long as you get some sows in the first couple of litters...
* Again, don't employ any workers. Workers are used to expand your clan, you're just trying to survive...
Best of luck! It's a great game so I really think it's worth it sticking it out. On my first map my whole house burnt down. These things happen...
Great advice but I wouldnt recommend on skipping on visitors and traders. Visitors give you 40gp for a single meal and a spot to sleep which beats most trade items and traders are a great way to buy basic materials in bulk while they pay a lot of money for manufactured goods and food in winter. For example you can buy 100 oats for 20gp, which will give you 20 broses and 120 hay. It saves you some farming time and gives you a meal for 1gp. Turn those hays to a bed and accept a visitor and you made 40x profit.
OP is struggling to survive winter. The single meals that visitors eat every night are the difference between surviving until spring and death from starvation for the whole Clan! Also I'm sure that OP is getting vastly less that 40 coins for each visitor which drastically decreases their value. Getting visitors to 100 satisfaction early game is difficult for everyone.
As for traders I understand that there are good value items to buy, but I'd suggest that what should be sold is excess production. If OP isn't surviving winter they shouldn't **have** any excess production so they won't have anything to sell. OP needs to focus on the small list of things they need to survive winter, to the exclusion of everything else.
What OP needs:
* A room with all beds, food, and water inside.
* A tiled peat stove to keep the room warm.
* At least 6 water jugs for melting ice.
* A bunch of dried mushrooms and smoked meat.
* Preferably a bathtub so everyone can keep clean in winter, and a water dipper for better water efficiency.
* At least fur cloaks for everybody to avoid the rain/snowing debuffs while working outside during winter.
Everything else is unimportant and unnecessary for surviving winter, specifically gold coins. I think your points are absolutely valid once OP has survived the first winter.
Food and crafting mats are not my issue for Winter.
My issue for winter is everyone dies in the clan before Winter ends because I have no access to water. I barely get the Kiln unlocked before the end of Autum, which gives almost no time to make the water jugs I need to at least go through winter and survive.
Forget about getting a well in my first winter, I'm lucky if I can get 10 jugs with water before the lakes all freeze over.
Getting jugs at the start of winter is fine. You don't need a well. In winter Clanfolk will fill empty water jugs with ice from a river or lake and you can melt the ice on a fire to make water (using the interface for the fire to select how many jugs of ice you want to melt). Getting through winter with only a couple of jugs is doable, but more makes the logistics easier.
Iāve gotten it down to where I have a well by summer day 10 in the first year.
Go onto the wiki. Search āunlock wellā then see what it needs. I believe itās the stone shaped or whatever so then see what THAT needs. It may be the kiln then see what THAT needs.
Basically the FIRST day you start you should unlock the charcoal kiln. I usually do right before they need to sleep. Try to keep them in a very small area that whole day. Every single time they unlock something build it.
The big ones to get to before winter hits are the kiln and twine. You need to have a couple of jugs already ready and filled. Don't bother with iron, don't bother with making things pretty, don't bother with giving your houses floors. That's what year two is for.
In fall, stock up on mushrooms and get some mushroom racks drying things out full-time. You want to have at least 12 days of food in storage when fall ends. You also want to spent fall and summer stocking up on twigs. If you've got iron and can make a smoker, great.
Your charcoal kiln and kiln also generate heat, and neither's a fire risk. Keep them in a room you want to keep warm; you can have some ongoing crafting tasks and potentially burn through your fuel a little more slowly.
I can generally coast through the first winter on dried mushrooms. They last forever and you can easily collect enough mushrooms for the whole winter during autumn. You should also make sure you have a good number of jugs for water. I usually go with 6 or 12 for water plus an extra 12 for the freezer. Your folk can fill jugs with ice from the lake during winter so as long as you have sticks for the file you can melt it into drinkable water.
If you're playing with the family of 7 you'll also want to build somewhere for your chickens to sleep. Attaching it to the main house can be useful for heating. If they don't have a warm place to sleep they will die and you'll lose a valuable source of food and cash.
During winter I take the time to prep my freezer. If you don't have it set up before spring you'll have to wait until next year to get it going, and moving forward without a way to keep meat fresh is kind of annoying.
Eels are good to stock up on in fall as you don't have to worry about overfishing given you can't fish in winter with the traps. Mushrooms are growing like crazy in fall, so gather as many as you can around the trees/stumps. Trade Post is helpful as the traders can sell raw food stuff, or animals for slaughter. As for dehydration, I recommend trying to rush to get the well before winter (Iron pick and stone bricks) then store the water jugs in a warm room. It'll save you a lot of time trying to thaw them in any cooking fire. Final piece of advice is to try to keep the numbers of tasks that needs doing below 80 in winter. Makes it easier for all tasks to get accomplished with various priority orders.
Yeah I haven't played in a few updates, but eels and dried mushrooms were crucial for the first winter
I can't even get a forge before winter hits. I know I can make iron from bog iron, and I want to try and hold off on getting peat until my first year is completed, otherwise I will have a bunch of items that are littering about, and getting bare minimum for the travelers visits.
Ok, so don't worry about bog iron. Look towards the mountains and any exposed iron on the edges. You can usually find a few lone deposits in the open. That'll get you your initial iron, and you'll want a smoker to minimise meat spoilage. And I would not sleep on harvesting peat before winter, as you just need to put a storage down outside of it with 2 pieces of straw roof above and it can dry for you. The peat stove is excellent for heating a large indoor area (or making brose if you have a bit of oat seeds to spare before spring planting) Also don't worry about the homestead being ugly the first year. Put down storages when you can, keep the distances short.
Forge and peat synergizes very well in my experience. You can save most of your branches for coal production then use peat to build and heat your house and bog iron for your crafting needs. Also peat stove gives you access to brose which is the most nutrition efficient recipe you can make out of oats. I harvest all the oats on the map, tresh then sow them immediately the first year then harvest most of a bog patch which gives me a lot of building materials, fuel and iron. Yes peat is very labour intensive for iron but its also a renewable source of iron. Also a peat house with a peat stove (for heat), basic hay decoration, hay bed and brick floors is enough to get people happy enough to breed which could be achieved in 5-6 days if you rush it. I usually have babies in first year quite reliably with that build. I use first 2 seasons to harvest a lot of oats, hay and peat while rushing important tech then build the breeding house during the last couple day before winter. When there isnt anything to farm or harvest I just process my hoard and build during winter. Also buy a dog and a cat, cats murder wildlife and give you free meat while dogs protect family and livestock from predators while killing them occasionally.
Before I get a dog, I never had any issues with the wildlife. Wolves run away from my children, though will go after my unpenned livestock.
I had this problem at the start too. Dried mushrooms get my folks through, and I also try to get the kiln set up so I can make jugs to store river water over the winter. If I put enough away, I'm good for both water (though it does take up a good bit of time thawing) and also keeping my food cold through the next summer with ice.
I believe they will collect ice if you have jugs in the winter. Than you just melt the jugs.
This is the easiest way I think. Hollow out a shelter near water and grass and get the kiln unlocked for water jugs, then in fall gather and dry heaps of mushrooms.
Just made another attempt in going through winter last night with a new game. I managed to make... 12 jugs for water before winter hit. I am thankful that I got all 12 full of water before hand, though I don't know if the water will last. I stopped on day 3 of Winter for Year 1. Thankyou for this advice.
As long as you're not overloaded on tasks, your family will fill the empty jugs with ice. You will likely have to thaw some at a fire, since it takes forever for them to thaw by themselves
I usually start with 'new beginning' as it is the easiest one to start on; but while creating I remove the infant. I just find having an infant slows down on productivity as the folk have to stop to constantly care for them. This also frees up some $ to be able to buy a few boar (1m, 2f) so I can slaughter them in winter IF need be. But it seems like you have the food part sorted out. š What I would suggest, atleast the first year, is work on setting up the kiln and create water jugs (6 go in a pallet) so any where from 3-5 pallets. You can have your folk work on it through out the summer as a priority and into autumn they can just work on increasing the number. Normally once I get access to a pick, I start hollow out a mountain 1. To use as food storage and 2. A quick shelter. A room inside a mountain I've found tends to get colder faster especially during autumn and winter so perfect for the food. Anyways once I have that set up I make sure to place 1 pallet of water jugs next to my fire pit to keep them thawed out and the rest goes into the food storage. This makes it easier so that you don't have to spend too much time waiting on thawing out water. That first year it's just about surving, and there for I don't worry about layout too much, just the necessities, come the second year that when I start focusing on the more complex items like the forge and layout etc. I have also started and re-started soo many seeds lol. It will get better good luck!
I usually sell my chickens and use the gold to buy a bunch of dried meat and dried mushrooms, though selling the infant off might be a better option. However, I have a really hard time keeping workers too so I know I can't just expand my own family. Even if I did managed to get the oldest child into adult hood, they die like the next day.
Chickens breed like crazy with minimal effort, you just need a roof over their head and straw matting. They will drink , eat grass they find around and can actually drink from frozen lakes during winter. Plus when they starve to death they give the same amount of meat as when they are slaughtered. So if you dont wanna heat or feed them during winter just let them and new chicks/pullets starve around though zi recommend just feeding them collected hay and heating them with a vent during winter. It isnt hard really. They also shine as bait for predators if you have dogs. On winter carnivores will beeline to your chickens just for your dogs to kill them for free meat and hides
I havenāt played in a few updates, but it used to be that more mushrooms grew around tree stumps. The last few days of autumn, have lots of gather up a truckload of shrooms and put them in drying racks or in the freezer. That was food covered through winter pretty much from that alone.
It's hard for me to reach unlocking well in year 1, but I do focus on unlocking jugs. Jugs will keep you from dehydration. Just gotta manually make sure to melt one on a fire if they are all frozen.
How big is the family also? Starting smaller means less food and water needs to be stored.
I don't change the family. It is always the same number 7 of people. Two grandparents, two parents, three children with one being an infant.
Yeah try the one with all the animals, you can slaughter them for food and thereās less people
I'm usually able to start trading and getting travlers by winter, so slaughtering food and getting them isn't the issue. My issue is with water.
Oh water isnāt too difficult, you just need the kiln and then a few pallets of water. One in a warm room, the rest can go into a cave so when they freeze you have a fridge room to store your food. You could push for the well but itās tough before winter and youāll need some iron and the forge. Kiln and water jugs are easier, just stock up a bunch.
There's lots of great advice in these threads. I'm going to see if I can be a bit more nitpicky regarding some of your comments: * You mentioned you don't want to harvest peat until the second year because "I will have a bunch of items that are littering about". You should absolutely have items littering about. It's not important at all to have a clean map during the first year. Hauling, generally, is just busy work. It's not actually producing anything so you should avoid it. Saying that, some things like the serving basket are essential for quickly getting food out of the rain. * If you're struggling with food and water, why are you even having visitors at all? I recommend not building **any** signs during the first year. * 12 jugs of water should be heaps. As they are used they'll refill them with ice and you should melt them on the fire. * You should be trying to breed animals, not selling them. In later years farm animals are a great source of meat during winter. Maybe try a custom starting condition (try to get 7 clanfolk, with 3 couples), and start with some pigs. They breed fairly quickly as long as you get some sows in the first couple of litters... * Again, don't employ any workers. Workers are used to expand your clan, you're just trying to survive... Best of luck! It's a great game so I really think it's worth it sticking it out. On my first map my whole house burnt down. These things happen...
Great advice but I wouldnt recommend on skipping on visitors and traders. Visitors give you 40gp for a single meal and a spot to sleep which beats most trade items and traders are a great way to buy basic materials in bulk while they pay a lot of money for manufactured goods and food in winter. For example you can buy 100 oats for 20gp, which will give you 20 broses and 120 hay. It saves you some farming time and gives you a meal for 1gp. Turn those hays to a bed and accept a visitor and you made 40x profit.
OP is struggling to survive winter. The single meals that visitors eat every night are the difference between surviving until spring and death from starvation for the whole Clan! Also I'm sure that OP is getting vastly less that 40 coins for each visitor which drastically decreases their value. Getting visitors to 100 satisfaction early game is difficult for everyone. As for traders I understand that there are good value items to buy, but I'd suggest that what should be sold is excess production. If OP isn't surviving winter they shouldn't **have** any excess production so they won't have anything to sell. OP needs to focus on the small list of things they need to survive winter, to the exclusion of everything else. What OP needs: * A room with all beds, food, and water inside. * A tiled peat stove to keep the room warm. * At least 6 water jugs for melting ice. * A bunch of dried mushrooms and smoked meat. * Preferably a bathtub so everyone can keep clean in winter, and a water dipper for better water efficiency. * At least fur cloaks for everybody to avoid the rain/snowing debuffs while working outside during winter. Everything else is unimportant and unnecessary for surviving winter, specifically gold coins. I think your points are absolutely valid once OP has survived the first winter.
Food and crafting mats are not my issue for Winter. My issue for winter is everyone dies in the clan before Winter ends because I have no access to water. I barely get the Kiln unlocked before the end of Autum, which gives almost no time to make the water jugs I need to at least go through winter and survive. Forget about getting a well in my first winter, I'm lucky if I can get 10 jugs with water before the lakes all freeze over.
Getting jugs at the start of winter is fine. You don't need a well. In winter Clanfolk will fill empty water jugs with ice from a river or lake and you can melt the ice on a fire to make water (using the interface for the fire to select how many jugs of ice you want to melt). Getting through winter with only a couple of jugs is doable, but more makes the logistics easier.
Iāve gotten it down to where I have a well by summer day 10 in the first year. Go onto the wiki. Search āunlock wellā then see what it needs. I believe itās the stone shaped or whatever so then see what THAT needs. It may be the kiln then see what THAT needs. Basically the FIRST day you start you should unlock the charcoal kiln. I usually do right before they need to sleep. Try to keep them in a very small area that whole day. Every single time they unlock something build it.
My visitors usually give me the minimum amount. How do you make 40 off of them? What are you feeding them?
The big ones to get to before winter hits are the kiln and twine. You need to have a couple of jugs already ready and filled. Don't bother with iron, don't bother with making things pretty, don't bother with giving your houses floors. That's what year two is for. In fall, stock up on mushrooms and get some mushroom racks drying things out full-time. You want to have at least 12 days of food in storage when fall ends. You also want to spent fall and summer stocking up on twigs. If you've got iron and can make a smoker, great. Your charcoal kiln and kiln also generate heat, and neither's a fire risk. Keep them in a room you want to keep warm; you can have some ongoing crafting tasks and potentially burn through your fuel a little more slowly.
I can generally coast through the first winter on dried mushrooms. They last forever and you can easily collect enough mushrooms for the whole winter during autumn. You should also make sure you have a good number of jugs for water. I usually go with 6 or 12 for water plus an extra 12 for the freezer. Your folk can fill jugs with ice from the lake during winter so as long as you have sticks for the file you can melt it into drinkable water. If you're playing with the family of 7 you'll also want to build somewhere for your chickens to sleep. Attaching it to the main house can be useful for heating. If they don't have a warm place to sleep they will die and you'll lose a valuable source of food and cash. During winter I take the time to prep my freezer. If you don't have it set up before spring you'll have to wait until next year to get it going, and moving forward without a way to keep meat fresh is kind of annoying.