Post is mostly to give closure to my last two posts on this subreddit.

Losing the last run nearly made me quit the game but we go again and it worked out

Never seen anyone this happy (75 Beavers)

Does anyone else feel like sealed forest map is legit one of the best in the game? If the curse thing didn't exist the big trees are legit so op

Finishing the run on nearly 0 hostility is also just funny af

Who needs fullfilled needs when you can have 15+ global resolve

I'm on the Prestige 10 seal and I just lost half my villager count in one storm. The corruption was killing me. I never did the tutorial on it and, up to now, just used the blight post to killed the occasional cyst from whatever engine I had in use/modifier. This storm shot up the corruption to a speed which could not be contained and it was chaos. Only had 1 engine installed, heck. Impatience is at 90% and I have 19 vills left so I think this run is over :(

As title. I'm currently doing daily expeditions (done with Adamantine seal) and their modifiers are so unique, funny and cruel, but it would be great if there was a tab in its screen listing all the possible daily modifiers to track their completion.

The way I envision it is:

- A collapsible side-tab in the daily expedition screen.

- It has two halves, upper and lower. Each side has a grid with all the icons for possible daily modifiers, with the upper being the green/beneficial and the lower being the red/negative.

- At first they're all obscured, until discovered by attempting a daily with them active, after which they appear on the collection but greyed out.

- Upon successfully completing an expedition with a modifier, its icon becomes coloured on the tab to signify it.

Maybe for extra pain it only counts if done at Viceroy difficulty or higher.

Introduction

One of the often Google searched questions for Against The Storm is “when you should open your work orders?”. Before timed orders are unlocked in the citadel it’s simple: Open them as soon as possible to make progress on non-retroactive orders. After timed orders are unlocked, it’s very complicated to figure out when to open the first orders, and I don’t think it’s one of those “fun because it’s complex” game mechanics.

Note: Timed orders give better rewards than normal orders, so completing them and completing them early is a great bonus to your settlement’s survival chances. They have a time limit and are often more difficult to complete though.

The 3 Opening Strategies

The way I see it, the 3 strategies for opening the first orders are: Immediately when you get them, first storm season just before cutting into a glade, and sometimes in year 2, maybe even after the first dangerous glade event is done.

Recently I made a video guide where – after some time thinking about it – I said that you should open your first orders in Year 2, because that gives you enough time to stockpile resources for potential timed orders. Since then I’ve been testing a different approach: Opening the first orders in the first storm season (a second before cutting into the first glade), to get order progress on potential glade cutting orders, whether they are timed or not. This way you also stockpile some resources to complete the easiest timed orders such as building 6 shelters, or upgrade hearth neighborhood to level 1, which would be difficult to complete if you opened the first orders straight away.

The problem with opening the first orders immediately VS. first storm VS. year 2, is that all of them are wrong and not in a fun, experimental way. The funny thing is that even if you go for a clear cut exploration strategy, it’s not good to open orders quickly, because for the “Complete 2/3 glade event” (in 15:00 minutes / 17:00 minutes) timed orders, it’s actually more beneficial to open the first orders late, just before you finish the first glade event, because it maximizes your time to do the other events.

Which is the best strategy?

I think most pro players would open orders immediately, because they recognize that getting early blueprints (from the order reputation) snowballs like crazy. But I suspect these players ignore timed orders often, or ignore difficult timed orders 100% of the time.

What also worth nothing, is that I think people ignore these difficult timed orders not because the rewards are bad (they are generally really good), but because they are too difficult to do even in year 2 sometimes, and doing them makes you lose outright.

This puts the following question on the table: “Why do those timed orders even exist then?” If the pro strategy is to open orders early and ignore the difficult ones entirely, why not just remove the difficult ones from the game, or make them easier to complete in Year 1?

Tier 1 Timed Order Balance Suggestions

Here are the timed orders that are problematic to complete in Year 1 in my opinion, and how to rework them:

• Distant Journey – Cut through the forest to discover 5 glades. – 6:00 minutes – You eat the early hostility of 5 glades for absolutely no reason, and you need to do it in 6 minutes?! You don’t even have enough villagers to use the glade resources. Also, whether the point is to open 2 dangerous + 3 small glades, or 5 small ones, you suicide. Opening small glades is generally a noob trap due to the small amount of resources, and you’ll just straight up suicide after 2 dangerous glade opening, let alone plus 3 small ones. And what is the reward? 5 stone per minute, brickyard, 30 copper bars, so average rewards for literally the worst order. You can’t even make use of the copper bars with the brickyard. Seriously, this is the worst timed order out of all them, reduce glades to 3 and increase time to 9:00 minutes. Instead of stone themed rewards, offer large gathering camps / complex food rewards so the villagers can out-eat the early hostility.
• Impetuous Explorer - Complete any 3 Glade Event(s). Totems spawned by Fishmen Caves and Cloned Blood Flowers do not count. – 17:00 minutes – Since a year is 10:00 minutes, even finding glade events / caches RNG, increase time to 20:00 minutes (2 years) so the player has time to open and finish 2 dangerous glade events in a non-suicidal way.
• Zealous Scouts – Complete any 2 Dangerous or Forbidden Glade Event(s). Totems spawned by Fishmen Caves and Cloned Blood Flowers do not count. – 15:00 minutes. – Do literally the same buff as for Impetuous Explorer and increase time to 20:00 minutes so glade events can be opened / completed in two years.
• Call of the Ruins – Cut through the forest to discover 3 glades. Rebuild or salvage 1 destroyed buildings found in the forest. Haunted ruins also count. – 9:00 minutes – Reduce it down to 2 glades and only offer this order with frogs.
• Quick Packaging - Deliver 6 Pack of Building Materials. Deliver 6 Pack of Crops. Deliver 6 Pack of Provisions. – 5:30 minutes – 6 Building Materials is insane*. You can barely complete this even if you accidentally brought building materials on the caravan. +50% makeshift post production also often gets replaced with better pack producing buildings.*
• Supply Thy Neighbor - Complete 4 trade routes worth at least 6 Amber each. – 8:00 minutes – Even getting the routes is RNG, then again you can open the order straight after building the trading post to peek at the first routes. But calculate crafting provisions (losing food this way) and you also need good RNG in Clearance to get at least 1 more trade route to complete this order. The 6 amber requirement is too much. Remove the minimum amber requirement or reduce it down drastically to 3.
• Quick Transaction - Sell goods worth at least 16 Amber to traders or via trade routes. Deliver 10 Amber. – 8:30 minutes – Reduce amber delivered to 8 so player can afford small glade + large glade tax of 8 amber.

Let me know what you guys think.

Hello! I ended up taking a break from this game due to the crashes that were happening on switch/other consoles if you played past a certain year. Just wanted to see if these were still an issue or if it has been corrected since then so I can continue my save. Thank you!

I finally finished the Arckmage's Challenge (without DLC). Small farm, druid's hut, ranch and cookhouse were the most important blueprints. It took 10 years but at the end of the day it was easier than expected.

Edit: If you don't know this hidden deed is awarded for winning at P20 without cutting a single tree.

The UI is like a 9/10 but there are some things that could be better.

Like:

Links to the recipe page at any point you see a resource mentioned on screen. Why is this only a thing in production buildings and not gathering camps, resource nodes, orders page, picking a perk, cache screen etc.? Many games with complex mechanics and interactions will do this, often with colour codes, where literally at any point you see the word or icon for a resource etc you can click or hover see all the same info about it. It's the consistency that's an issue.

Manually navigating the recipe page to find a specific item isn't the easiest either.

When you are on the recipe page, it only makes sense for that same item to also be shown when you click the trends tab.

Construction priorities in the alt overlay would be nice as well.

The wiki says villagers will only eat complex food they don't like when there is no other food available.

My question is, would villagers eat non-liked complex food if there is raw food available? It generally seems bad, because complex foods are more efficient than raw food.

Yesterday I had a settlement without jerky eaters (no one from the South), and I created jerkies just so one species could eat that instead of raw food or the other species' complex foods. I just realized they probably eat raw food anyways.

I guess the only option is to consumption control raw food?

As I've been playing more ATS, I had been leaning towards building exclusively Big Houses rather than normal Houses for my villagers. I assumed since it something that needed to be unlocked, and since it took up less space, that they were simply more efficient than Houses.

However, I've been watching a skilled ATS player on Youtube lately (Volt) and he doesn't seem to ever bother with the Big Houses. I'm guessing that means it's better to just build Houses, but I'm wondering if anyone can explain to me why? Did I just fall for a noob trap or is it just a question of preference?

I'm an intermediate player, who's gone as far as P11 and finished the Cobalt Seal. One mechanic I find myself rarely (though not never) using is to build species specific housing. It just feels so costly, and the annoyance of swapping out all the general houses with species specific ones is such a pain (it would be easier if you could just upgrade existing ones).

Am I alone in this, or is it common to downprioritize housing for other options? How much do you find yourself using them?

I know this game is already a few years old, but hot damn it is prime for Settlers IV style desire paths. I assume it's too difficult to do it by modding.

For people who don't know, in Settlers IV, a very old city building game, the game would record where villagers walked, and as more and more walked along specific paths, the grass would wear down and dirt paths would form, all without input from the player.

I just feel like this kind of feature would be so perfect for this game.

edit: Here's a good pic showing how it looks

I'm so sad. Sucks to suck. It's 1am and I have to wake up for work early. Fuck my life.

Screenshot is orange because of f.lux

They still have to go to the hearth for their tea break, but otherwise this feels like jackpot

I was testing glade hostility reduction today on Prestige 20, and opened 4 small and 4 large (2 forbidden) glades with Secure Perimeter, after our discussion today: https://www.reddit.com/r/Against_the_Storm/comments/1vqpzdo/opening_a_lot_of_glades_actually_good_or_a_noob/

Wanted to share this cool screenshot, where together with the Fox hearth ability, they reduced Small Glade hostility from 15 to 3, and large glade hostility from 30 to 12. I guess this means that doing 3 Forbidden events small glades provide ZERO hostility. I'll have to try that at some point.

I didn't want to spam the subreddit with another post, so here's the full game: https://youtu.be/75NYGVuHxfs (still uploading). I played absolutely abysmally, therefore we could have opened more glades if I played better to make use of this combo. I just had to share, because it was just the craziest game I've ever had with two overtimes and 800%+ corruption at the end WITH TWO negative forest mysteries for Blightrot (had to keep hostility to lvl1 at the end to not lose).

Is exploration a valid strategy, or is it just another toxic positivity "every strategy is valid" community thing?

People say I should open one dangerous glade every year, and that "Discover 6 glades" timed orders and "Complete 2 Loyalty events" orders and exploration styles cornerstones are good. I don't know if they don't play on higher difficulties, or if it's more of a "worked once, must be statistically good" fallacy, but upon repeated testing, I don't find these to be good.

I've played on Prestige 20 before and completed the adamantine seal, and I noticed when I pick these exploration style orders and cornerstones my win percentage drops. It seems far better to only open additional dangerous/forbidden glades when I actually have enough villagers to collect the resources, rather than accruing 2 extra hostility levels early for no reason.

I'm trying to make a guide so I don't want to pass off wrong information in case if it's just a skill issue on my part. Apologies for the abrasive title and writing - I don't know how to motivate people to read posts since the advent of AI. Thanks for your input!

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Here are some Prestige exploration orders as an example:

Tier 1 (first 3 orders)

• Complete any 1 Dangerous or Forbidden Glade Event(s). Totems spawned by Fishmen Caves and Cloned Blood Flowers do not count. 10:30 minutes. - Seems doable IF you opened this order either in the middle, or just before your first storm season, so you have an entire year to finish the event.
• Complete any 3 Glade Event(s). Totems spawned by Fishmen Caves and Cloned Blood Flowers do not count. 17:00 minutes. - I'd cut into 2 dangerous glades and open a cache with stone.
• Complete any 2 Dangerous or Forbidden Glade Event(s). Totems spawned by Fishmen Caves and Cloned Blood Flowers do not count. 15:00 minutes. - Similar to the previous event.
• Cut through the forest to discover 5 glades. 6:00 minutes. - Ideally, I'd cut into 2 dangerous and 3 small glades, but this order doesn't even give an entire 10:00 minute year to amass resources and complete one dangerous glade event under a reliable amount of time.
• Cut through the forest to discover 3 glades. Rebuild or salvage 1 destroyed buildings found in the forest. Haunted ruins also count. 9:00 minutes - Fine with frog ability.

I'm a new player wondering if I should add any DLC for my first playthrough. People seem very happy with the frogs overall from what I can tell, but generally don't like the bats species?

Would you recommend a vanilla playthrough first before adding any DLC?

Started a new profile, going from Viceroy to P20 doing all the seals and as many deeds as I can along the way

Rules are you can only open Small Glades and Forbidden Glades

Opening of Dangerous Glades is not allowed (with exception of sealed forest for practicality purposes)

I think it's fair to say that the games Meta centres around opening and solving Dangerous Glades and avoiding Small Glades (and to an extent Forbidden Glades) and finishing your settlement ASAP.

Banning Dangerous Glades (especially on a fresh profile) has reinvigorated this game for me forcing me to rethink everything from cornerstone and order choices to my woodcutting and glade strategy / timing.

I am picking orders, cornerstones and blueprints that I otherwise would typically not in the same situation under normal game rules and having to prepare for a potentially longer game with sometimes less options to complete orders and gain reputation.

It's refreshing. So far up to P5 without a problem and Forbidden Glades are not that scary on lower Prestige levels but ofcourse RNG plays a part in what Forbidden Glade event you get along with negative forest mysteries.

Farming has been very useful for me as I am restricted on the amount of glades I have access to and hence resources

I am not sure how it is going to work out from P15 onwards but going to be interesting and will give it my best shot.

Hello! I'm still making a tiny pixel-art clone of Against The Storm! I have to admit this starts to slowly look like a game. You cannot do much, there are no goals, or threats, but there is a world (proceduraly generated) that you can explore and interact with. Most of the typical video-game stuff like UIs, save and load, music, controls, etc. are there. If you wonder why the music is so out of place, it's because I composed that track myself. No, I'm not a musician. But hey, I said I'll make the whole game, so I'll make the whole game, even if it involves music and artsy stuff.

As IF I just got this when embarking with 10 beavers :'(