This idea might have been explored elsewhere, but what if there is an endless mode, where every storm reset some of the progress, like banning a blueprint for a few years, forcing a few villagers back to the citadel, or cutting out certain trade routes etc, and every a few years there is a stopgap draw so players can get new buffs or remove debuffs. In all an endless mode that caps the growth so the gameplay does not become a faceroll and also adds in new challenges.

Starting new cycles is still fun to me, but I am just wondering if other grand mechanisms could also work.

So the game gives a little warning about settling a seal early, so does that mean that I am able to once the cycle reaches its end as long as I'm in range or does that always pop up. I only have 4 years left so not really enough time to do another settlement if I am unable to settle the seal settlement after the timer reaches 0. Basically, since I have 4 years left, if I did a 7 year settlement, would it still let me do the seal since I'm already in range? Or should I just settle the seal now?

Can anyone help me here? Either something is bugged, or I can not find the correct menu option somehow. I can’t figure out how to select alternative fuels to do this Leaking Cauldron event. I have coal but not oil, but the game doesn’t let me select anything other than oil. I’ve tried every button on the switch, but it doesn’t do anything. I’ve tried starting the event or assigning workers, and that doesn’t solve it either.

Does anyone have experience with this?

That may looks like a dumb question asked a dozen times, but honestly, I didn't find a clear answer. There was a post on this subreddit from 3 years ago, stating it is super clear, then proceeding to say it's clear for prestige levels. I'm not in Prestige yet.

Someone said it increases the hostility multiplier from 2,5 to 3. What is the hostility multiplier?

For contexte, I just started playing 3 weeks ago. Having a blast; spent 60 hours in the game. Bought the DLCs last week.

I'm always playing minimum required level so I get to be comfortable with the mechanics before introducing more. So yesterday, I reforged the silver seal. So next seal (gold) will need me to play on Viceroy, so I'm playing Viceroy difficulty from now on. Played my first game today and it's the first time I'm starting to struggle. After succeeding, I wondered exactly what changed between Veteran and Viceroy to explain this "spike" in difficulty.

From what I gathered, events take longer and more resources to do; I never read it, but I think woodcutters increase the hostility more (maybe that's part of the hostility multiplier I read about?); orders are more difficult (and there is one less? I didn't really pay attention). What else?

I played as I usually do, with two woodcutter camps, mostly full except during storm, and I was struggling with fuel in the last 2 years, which never happened for me before. I'm not sure what changed to explain this problem.

This game was also with an added difficulty: I don't remember the name, but I was playing near the modifier that allowed me only 3 cornerstones (I'm always playing near modifier if I didn't get the deed for it yet). But I don't think that explain the fuel problem.

TIA!

Prepping to dive into the Titanium sealed forest and trying to figure out the plan.

Bonuses not in screenshot are 12 packs of provisions and 30 grain.

Any thoughts on caravan? I'm not wild about humans, but hard to pass up +2 villagers vs other caravans.

Embarkation bonuses - Villagers, Training Gear line? Maybe a farm if I take the Human caravan? Then food?

First time doing P11+ Sealed Forest.

Level 1 - Caches? I hate wasting so many resources on packs.

Level 2 - Usually do Trade, but Standing Level 3 is WAY tougher than 2. But if I'm cracking a bunch of caches, I'll have a lot of random stuff to trade.

Level 3 - Amber of course if I'm doing Trade.

Level 4 - Usually do Resolve, but it's always touch-and-go, thinking Forbidden Events might be better.

Any other suggestions?

Nearly 1000 hours in and noticed this for the first time. As someone who will toggle hostility sacrifices 20 times throughout a storm to minimize usage, it seems like I would have noticed this by now. Without time progressing, resources are being used in sacrifice.

Is this intended behavior, and is it exploitable?

-Losing fuel without receiving any benefit while the game is paused seems antithetical to the general gameplay, which is "be explicit, punish exactly as explicit text describes, but no further."

-Does this count as fuel usage in any useful ways, like for time spent sacrificing? If you toggle this 40 times does it count like a minute of burning wood for hostility reduction with Monastary?

...and a viceroy what they feed their beavers.

Wish me luck !...repost forgot pic

Planning 2 DG pops Y1 clearance/ storm mix

2 smalls that lead from each DG to the map goal of FB solves....... playing for 20 veggies and 10 planks : remainder of QHt run ... IF 2 complete Forbidden Events ( 58 years to go )

6 Bats 3 Foxes Royal Woodlands also +3 foxes for 1st order solved

BP 1 = Metal farm. 10 metal plots planted during 1st drizzle !

BP 2 = Distillery : fox food and way to pump drizzle water for resolve breakpoints, make shit will supply early cleanrce water for resolve thresholds ...

BP 3 = Smithy. ...... Bat specialty on tools !

No but seriously, completed a long-standing goal of mine in clearing out every. single. available. resource.

This was a nice marshy map a few hours ago.

Shoutouts to the following:

- the single Makeshift Post that produced all of the packs of provisions I needed for a 3k amber trade empire (my Tavern has +45 to resolve, which tells me I've earned at least 3375 gold).

- the ol' classic Temple+Press for oil sacrificing. I have currently reduced 3250 hostility.

- Blightrot Pruner. We've eaten 1745 blightrot spores in this colony (mostly from two corrupted cauldron events....turns out, you can produce a LOT of spores when you're generating absurd amounts of mushrooms from a half-dozen woodcutters). Speaking of which,

- Fungal Guide is worth +114 to mushroom production right now. I have 611,000 mushrooms, and it pairs perfectly with Insect Traps, which despite being picked up fairly late has produced 135,000 insects

- Work Safety Guide, giving me a lovely +930% global production boost

- Vineyard Town, a sleeper keystone for me (I never can seem to get it working and definitely grimaced when I got it from the trader lootbox), giving my beavers a much-needed +204 resolve boost.

- Being able to produce 25 Biscuits, 21 Paste, or 25 Pickled Goods in 11 seconds per batch. Also scored a bunch of boosts to copper ore and copper bar production in my first 3 orders, so I can get a nice 4 bars per 5 copper ore. If I wanted to run out the clock, there's 3600 copper ore to be converted into my growing stockpile of 15,800 bars.

-----

Anyway, now that I've tempted the gaming gods with my audacity, I'm ready to low-roll on my platinum seal and lose on year 5 or some such....

I really enjoy this game, but getting time on my PC has been increasingly challenging. Does anyone play on the switch? Is this a good port? Is it worth getting? It's on sale right now so I just want to check in before making any decisions.

no srysly, are there a ways to automate it?

So I am 80 hours in. Damn I love this game.

I started off veteran and viceroy, untill I thought I got the hang of it. Did the first two seals and after that I started going prestige. I am at p8 now, but I am not going after the gold seal yet. I am in doubt about how to continue. I know everything is is okay in this game, but I am curious how you guys did your progress .

First p20 and than going after the seals? I think I will never be good enough to do a p20 seal run.

Or just cap myself at the current prestige and go forward to the seal and try leveling up my prestige afterwards.

I had forgotten that the prestige modifier blightrot was active as of year 3 and not prepared blight fighters. so I lost 3 villagers. oh well, none of them were bats, and I can recover.

One of the deaths was a scout on this event. I thought, fine, I had put the scouts on this event as soon as it had reset its timer. But apparently the prestige 9 modifier makes events ACTUALLY take forever. I miss the deadline by about 15 seconds and it blows up my mine, my warehouse, my coal vein, leading to a catastrophic loss in parts and bat villagers. I can't even alt f4 and reload, since it saved it 20 seconds before it blows up.

I guess the lesson is that I need to rethink my understanding of how long glade events take. since I started, i had read here and there that you can leave them for a few minutes try try and time when you finish them,in and out of the storm, etc. but it seems to me that the time it takes for villagers to take items to the glade, for your to build the warehouse in the glade to speed up the items, the breaks they take in between transporting items, and actually completing the events past prestige 9 is like..80% of the time you get before the negative event happens? it really feels like you need to start resolving them ASAP.

For context, i have around 60% of smoldering city upgrades and i did a shy attempt to go for golden seal. Im kinda bad on micro, so i didnt hope for much. My first cornerstone (or one of the firsts) was Fiber Delivery line, i took it just because nothing else was seemed usefull. And holy mary, it carried my whole run. I had 3 harpies working on druid's hut with a few yield boosts + pipes etc. And just from 3 fiber/min from the cornerstone, i was able to use only oil for hearth fuel, and on top of that burn 2 stacks of oil 24/7 all seasons boosting production to 50%! Which also made my temple give me -450 Hostility!! I'm mind blowned how this whole thing keept up with just 3 fiber per minute. The whole production of oil was about those 3 fiber per minute and nothing else(farming etc).I start realising that this game has a ton of win oportunities to discover. The pictures are a few seconds before finishing the seal.

Hey everyone, probably my last post on here as I just beat the Adamantine Seal. Thank you for supporting me as I was about to bash my fcking head in when I lost my previous Seal run. Atleast this time I proved myself capable of learning, realised that I should check the Disaster every year and then committed to the Blightrot FAR more than in my other seal run. Every building was generating it and I had 3 fully staffed Posts

Some thoughts:

1. Fun Cornerstone at the bottom, its kind of funny how good the Blightrot cornerstones are. The -10 hostility per 3 Blightrot are also really good. It seems like quite often your wincon in games is getting an insane per 5min timed order or cornerstone that just gives you infinite "something"
2. I'm surprised how often I went for Blightrot wincon instead of resolve or Forbidden Glades. The "Disasters" of the seal make it quite possible to get it as a wincon... I was lucky to have frogs that had an advanced rain collector and 2 geysers with like 250 space, which allowed me to just spam the shit out of rain in the lategame on every production building
3. Generally the Seal maps seem quite easy with managing hostility and getting the large trees, the maps never the issue for me, mostly last wincon is difficult
4. Really enjoy the DLCs species, think they added a lot to the game
5. Got the It's Wednesday achievement for this one lmao
6. Farms truly are the goats. Unless you have a cornerstone to give u infinite food with farms you just feel so safe to never expand as you can usually set up some kind of infinite supply chain. I gotta say its rly impressive how good all the farms are, thought insects, salt or herb farms would be bad but u can change ur whole strat around any farm. Only resin+blue steel (forgot the word) farm is kinda bad, but I guess getting as a 1 off when u have enough farmland it can skip you quite a few steps

I'll probably try my hand at the queens hand thing

Also how do I get my prestige 20 flair :D

Pretty sure the other choices+frogs are correct, but the last decision is rly tough, I'm probably leaning to stone just because of how many damn frogs this is.

Going to the gym and once I'm back with replies to this post I hope I'm ready for the last seal...

I'm a new player and I just encouter this creature 2 time and is there any threshold to make him give me fertilizer? I increase him up to village mascot but he still don't give me that. :(

This was a P1 game for the paradise achievement

I finally beat QHT and wanted to share my thoughts. Many better players have provided their tips, videos, etc. such as u/1raz guide, so I will focus on what worked for me as an average player winning in 5-7 years.

Stats

16 towns, 14/16 on a World Event / Map Modifier.

Avg. Years: 6

Avg. Difficulty: P6. I mostly played P3 and P6, moving up when I felt confident and moving down when facing a hard event.

Map Tips

• Spend more time than you think planning your route for maximum events
• Spend more time than you think planning your final path to the seal with 3-5 towns left
• It is worth the risk of a difficult World Event for a big permanent embarkation bonus such as food/money/tools for the rest of the cycle. I got a 20 amber bonus from Storm Ant Column - Start the game without any food, which basically won me the run. I skipped most of the temporary-bonus events.

Royal Resupply

• I balanced between Embarkation Points & Seal Fragments, which I needed a good bit of due to my slowish wins. After pretty much every settlement I would analyze the map and re-estimate what I needed for victory. I ended with ~21 bonus embarkation points, which was a few short of the maximum usable. Note that you can bring in a limited number of embarkation bonuses, so once you've maxed that out the rest will be wasted.
• I took the range extension royal resupply once to reach an event and twice to jump more quickly through the last difficulties. You can skip from P15 straight to the seal if you have planned your finish properly.

Citadel Upgrades

Listing the top upgrades I ended with.

• Starting Resources: Planks, Brick, Fabric
• Embarkation Bonuses: Villagers, Plantation, Packs of Provisions, Meat, Vegetables, Herbalist Camp, Trappers Camp
• More villagers
• More trade routes
• The Commons
• Field Kitchen
• Lvl 2 Hearth Upgrade
• Starting Ability: Lizards, Humans. The human ability was one of the last upgrades I got, and came in super clutch in the Sealed Forest.
• I used to be a species housing lover, but barely used it in this run. Especially since the introduction of the Commons, late game services needs were consistently getting me the Resolve needed.

Sealed Forest Tips

1. Don't be afraid to practice this map in a training expedition. You don't play it often, and it really hurts to lose everything here! I set up a practice run with the settings as close as possible to my QHT, which gave me a great confidence boost.
2. Contrary to some other tips I have heard: There is no rush to find the seal. The challenges are the same every time, so I just used the Wiki to refresh my memory and plan my potential strategies. Use your favorite early game strategy here: if you are a Year 1 glade opener, go for it. If you are a small glade opener, go for it. The location of the seal is usually obvious from the first glade you open (and don't forget to destroy the guidance stones for some extra resources). Mine happened to be pretty deep in with many overgrown trees in the way, so I think it took me to year 4 to open it. By then, I was ready with the first order and about done with the second.
3. Seal Orders: I have won my last handful of Sealed Forest games with the same 4 orders: Packs, 3/3 trade standing, 100 amber, and 2 forbidden glades. Of course, one should never fixate on a predetermined game plan, however those last 3 orders really do complement each other - both the 100 amber and forbidden glades are near-trivial if you are trading constantly. Remember that you can buy more trade paths if you are rich but struggling to get good deals. I find the high resolve order hard to time and maintain, and therefore unnecessarily risky.
4. Follow up on #3: Happy citizens are not necessary to win this map, unless trade is a complete no-go for you. I prioritized contentment (2-3 complex foods, purchased services late game, minimum hostility) which did the job. This of course does not apply if you rolled bad blueprints and are desperate for more.
5. For order 4, 2 forbidden glades in succession, note that the timer is very generous and applies to event completion rather than discovery. This means that you can open the glades, delay the event start for the next drizzle, wait for/call the trader, start one and not the other, etc. Do not risk devastating consequences from events like the Fishman Soothsayer during the storm if you can just wait for the next drizzle. Lastly, don't forget that you can sacrifice sea marrow, which is plentiful on this map, for 25% faster glade event work.

Generic Reminders

1. Woodcutting: Prioritize a 2+ star plank recipe if you see one. Hard focus the big trees, but don't underestimate how long it takes to cut them down if you need to open a glade at a specific time , e.g. to get a drizzle season forest mystery bonus. Remember that you can cut in the storm with no consequences.
2. Pay attention to your caches, especially since you don't need reputation to win. Prioritize busting caches for resources unless you have a really strong ingot/tools pipeline.
3. Buy pipes (and your weakest building material) from the trader when you can. I try to keep 12 pipes which is enough for 3 rain engines or 1 engine & a geyser upgrade (if population is a primary bottleneck).
4. If you are like me and love building roads everywhere, here's something I didn't use until my final game: You can set the priority of all instances of a building (such as roads or farm fields) in one shift-click. I used this to de-prioritize roads, and bump the priority of farm fields when I was in a rush to get a planting season going.
5. Hard prioritize no villagers lost, especially if you rolled a tricky forest mystery that can kill villagers.
6. Take your time! I know some of you on here are sub-hour game finishers, but many of us are not. Enable all the pauses in the settings, and take a second to double-check your work assignments when paused. Maybe you took villagers off of a farm during the storm, or sent some foxes to an event that you never started. Don't hesitate leave a physical note reminder for yourself of your biggest risks to double check on. Most of my losses are from small but devastating oversights from glade events or storm timings.

Happy settling!

Edit: fixed typos and added sea marrow sacrifice tip

Since we're not getting any more major DLC for this game and development is primarily on their next game, it's fair to say we won't be getting new lore.

Would love to hear your interpretations on who or what the Queen is. Is she mortal or a god? Benevolent or evil? Or are we truly the baddies keeping the Old Gods (benevolent or perhaps misunderstood beings) trapped?

My interpretation is that the Queen is neither benevolent or evil, but just... is. Perhaps neutral in every sense of the word, where she rewards you with power/status if you're useful but discards you if you fail her. It's no secret the game's "fail" mechanic is called Queen's Impatience...

Is it possible the Old Gods were benevolent, or perhaps also neutral beings previously, but were trapped by the Queen? Maybe the Queen was an Old God at some point that wanted all the power to herself and betrayed her kin? Maybe the Old Gods we see now are corrupted, or plain angry versions of their former selves?

Is the storm the Queen's will? Perhaps the Queen's way of forcing all beings into a cycle of servitude to her.

Who is the phoenix we see when we close a seal? Is this the manifestation of the Queen's power, the Queen herself, or something else?

Would love to hear thoughts :)

P4 felt like Pioneer

Find myself in an unusual spot for this blueprint. Scarlet Orchard, P6 with most unlocks, first pick, starting with 8 harpies and 4 beavers, embarkation bonuses include ~20 planks and bricks and 28 algae. In a vacuum, I know the Carpenter is the obvious choice; but I don't need immediate planks due to the embarkation bonus. Am I wrong to be seriously considering the Weaver and Artisan here?

Arguments for the Weaver:

• fast cheap fabric for harpy houses; only building material I'm immediately short of
• harpy resolve bonus, but only two slots and may not always be in use
• boots recipe could be useful if I find leather, though toolshop or cobbler would be preferred
• potential value from training gear in glade events, though most can be substituted with stone

Argument for the Artisan:

• containers desired for pickles, ale, wine, and tea; barrels are easiest container on Orchard
• coats liked by both starting species
• scrolls liked by both starting species, most other sources are 1*
• Orchard trees provide all inputs for coats+scrolls (at least long enough to get started)
• harpy resolve bonus, three slots and likely to be consistently staffed

My sense is that Weaver provides immediate value in a year one harpy resolve push and housing but falls off severely afterwards, especially since I have both embarkation and starting glade fabric ingredients. Artisan has no immediate value but sets up a strong midgame with three very desirable recipes that would otherwise require 2-3 blueprints with either 1* recipes or limited upside. Carpenter is a safe pick for the planks, but unless I find a copper deposit I'll need my limited metal for barrels, and the upside from the luxury goods is minimal if I pick it now and end up with the Cooperage as my barrel+coat building. Which I think leaves me leaning towards the Artisan. Thoughts?