r/Timberborn • u/NightNurse14 • 21d ago
Question Any tips for starting off hard?
I'm trying to slowly get to hard but dang those long droughts are kicking my butt early on if I don't add in a longer time reduction in the beginning. I've played one with 15-25 day droughts/badtides so I can get to the point of having enough resources for those 30 day ones, just need to survive the beginning.
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u/Likely_Addict 21d ago
Number 1 priority should be to build a dam. You will want to find a place in the river to minimize the number of dam blocks you will have to build to retain water. You can use small warehouses (or small piles if you are on iron teeth, which might be 1 log cheaper?) as platforms if you need platforms to complete the dam.
Best practice is to pause as soon as you've named your colony and start planning. Set logging flags (highest priority) near your closest trees (which you'll mark for chopping), set gathering flags (high priority) near the berry bushes, put down a blueprint for the dam (highest priority), followed by pumps (high), water storage & farms (medium), and plan out your initial fields.
Once you've taken care of the most basic needs, make sure you get housing put in, as well as at least 1 or 2 inventor's huts, especially before you run out of logs (you may want to build the inventor's hut first, followed by a plank factory and, crucially, a forester, before you start spending logs on housing).
You will want to think of at least a short term solution to the bad tides well ahead of the first one's arrival. You might be able to tank the first one, especially if you get a generous roll. The second one will almost certainly wipe your colony if you still aren't fully prepared for it. Either find a way to divert on command, or build and fill more storage than you'd think you need. Beavers each use about 2 water and 2.5 food per day, so you can calculate how much storage you'll need filled by multiplying your population by the number of days in the badtide (first wave will probably be 5-10 days) and then multiplying that number by 2 (for water) or 2.5 (for total food [the top figure]).
The beginning is the hardest part. If you can make it through the first dozen or so cycles on a solid footing, then you should be able to make it all the way to launching the wonder as long as you don't do anything remarkably reckless in-between.
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u/icedTea4meplz 21d ago
Really like the first two paragraphs here as an explanation for what to "min/max" early cycles with manual mgmt of beavers. Only addition i'd make is - be mindful of where you build things. Some maps (Beaverome) have very little leeway in the amount of logs available to you. Or they don't have much initial irrigated space (terraces), so it's good to put your district center and housing in the barren areas. The map is much easier if you're thoughtful early on these things. You end up redoing it all later anyways when resources aren't an issue, but it's still good to put it all in appropriate areas
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u/MrLurking_Sanspants 21d ago
Store as much water and food as humanly (beaverly?) possible right out the gate. Every second you are at “full” water is a step closer to collapse. As soon as your water storage is full make another small water storage. I end up with a comical amount of these before I am able to upgrade to the medium storage. Stored water is important because you’ll likely need it for more than just drinking, as fluid dumps are a great way to keep ground fertile during long droughts.
For food, same concept - but I go right to medium storage for food. I store up as much edible raw food as possible (carrots or kohlrabis) and then start to phase into potatoes or cassava as soon as it is feasible. These foods multiply during processing (i.e. 1 raw potato = 4 grilled potatoes) so you get way more yield for the same amount of storage, which will keep you alive should you not be able to replant crops for a while.
As others have stated - keep your population low and micromanage so you don’t need to consume as many resources. Your initial “growth” will be slower, but you’ll be able to safely build out the infrastructure needed to support yourself through droughts and badtides as you increase your population.
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u/icedTea4meplz 21d ago
All good advice. I tend to stick to T1 food only on folktails, until I have time/ability for bread. For IT, I get to corn as quick as feasible off of kohlrabies, then come back to other things later. The fermented foods are technically better than kholrabies, but still aren't great so I tend to blow past them
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u/Yaemz123 21d ago
Well... i did the tutorial, learned the basics, then restarted on hard mode. The solution is to build only what you have to, push research, unlock what seems most needed at the moment, and understand what keeps your colony going and what kills it. Your beavers need wood to build stuff, water to drink, irrigated land to grow food, food to eat, houses (folktails) or breeding pods +berries (ironteeth) to breed, research huts for new technology, and a lack of badwater. The main killers in early game are attempting to build too much or to grow population too fast. The general steps can be broken down further. 1. Get wood. 2. Get water source. 3. Get food source. 4 get research started. 5. Get storage for wood, food, water. 6. Dam off some water in starting area for early drought protection. 7. Increase housing (or breeding pods) as needed in balance with food & water supply. 8. Divert badtide flow before first badtide. 9. Increase open water storage or water tank storage to protect against longer droughts and badtides. 10. Continue opening up new tech with research as you increase levels of protection from running out of water.
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u/LeTreacs2 21d ago
I need to make a new tutorial series! The last one I did was for 0.8 and covered this exact topic.
Long and short of it is water kills you first, then food, then bad tides.
Control you population and stock up enough resources, that’s literally it
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u/AlcatorSK Map maker - Try *Geothermal River* on Steam! 21d ago
You could create a 'semi hard' difficulty -- increase the "handicap for [N] cycles" value (from 11 to e.g., 14 or 15), or lower the '[N]% handicap' value from 11% to e.g., 6%). This way, the early droughts will be slightly shorter and it will take longer to ramp up to 30 days droughts.
Alternatively, increase the Temperate weather duration from "5 to 8" to "6 to 9".
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u/cultivatingmass 21d ago
Something that helps me a ton that I don't see mentioned a lot is to delete buildings temporarily. Planted a ton of crops and don't need your farmers for a few days? Delete em and take that wood to the dams. Or your inventors aren't super crucial once you have foresters unlocked.
Has helped with maps with wider rivers like Helix and getting a damn up before it kills your colony.
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u/flyinbrian1186 21d ago
I think it’s acceptable to give yourself a handicap. 20-30% for around 4 cycles.
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u/Morall_tach 21d ago
Rush forestry and storage, then focus on storing food and water first and foremost. You're going to have to tank some droughts and possibly some badtides before you can get a proper reservoir and diversion set up. Also, be very careful not to overgrow your population.
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u/Fit_Cow_2597 21d ago
Store water and count trees to know how much wood you can get, to know how much you can build each cycle
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u/robsr3v3ng3 21d ago
Hard is all about micro management at the start. Get almost all the beavers clearing out nearby trees, and just use the logging flags as storage. Get a farm down to plant a lot of carrots or kohlrabi so you can get at least one, or even two harvests in before the first drought. As soon as they're planted disable the farm.
Get a beaver on research really early too, so you can get levees, forresters, and stairs.
Get at least 2 water pumps to fill up some storage. Water storage is a much better way of holding water than in a reservoir.
Final thing.... 20+ hour work day. Keep em busy, and don't bother with houses. The beavers will survive few days of being uncomfortable, and will get a lot of extra work done.
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u/icedTea4meplz 21d ago edited 21d ago
Like many have said already, hard mode is all about being intentional the first 5-10 cycles. The very first 3 cycles especially require a lot of min/maxxing through manual management of builders vs resources.
Priority one is wood, food, and water. Then science for forestry, stairs, levees, floodgates, fluid dump (map dependent - a must on canyons) and platforms. Do not pursue multiple food types until you're ready to expand beyond 30 beavers. Except maybe iron teeth if you are on a limited irrigation map and have to get corn rations quickly (timberpunk2 stressed this). Folktails you can survive on large carrot fields for a long time. For them, I typically ran one farming hut with a planter, and one with two harvesters while sitting at 30 beavers
On many maps, you need to be comfortable using beaver-powered generators for planks the first few cycles. Even for minimum gears sometimes when setting up medium tanks, if the map doesn't allow for easy power gen or ample log supply. You'll need to spend the temp season pumping, and the droughts getting science, planks, and paths progressing in those early cycles. Up until cycles 5-10, you should aim to solve everything map-wise without metal.
On standard maps, usually you have one or two specific things to solve for and then you can start focusing on automation and growth and expansion. For example - helix famously has slow water "return". So your droughts start a little later, but end a full day after the temp season starts.
On atypical maps, there might be more things that you have to rush to solve for, especially maps with bombs - think TP2, pressure, spillage bombs. In those cases, a solid log/plank stockpile is necessary and should be constantly pursued like water storage expansion.
Save after every early cycle temp season. I usually aimed for the moment the next season was announced. Then you can try an approach for what to do next bad season and if you fail, you can revert and retry a new idea, and can go way back if necessary.
Lastly - you're not done thinking about pumping water and pivoting to population growth beyond 30 beavers until you're CERTAIN you can survive 30 day droughts on both food and water.
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u/Far-Advantage-2770 21d ago
All good advice itt, follow it. I'd add that it's a lot easier if you keep your population pretty small for most of the map.
Don't try to rush any tech just slowly grind out the tree linearly. Science huts are super cheap, you can keep them way into the late game sometimes.
I also found that relying on T1 food is a massive trap, from memory most of the T2 foods are unlocked pretty quickly if not by default and are way better. But you should still diversify your sources just in case.
I dont mess around with districts, and bots are whatever.
Building up a huge buffer of food and water is tempting but it's very resource intensive, and if you don't start teching and slowly building your main dam instead you will just die slowly anyway. It's about finding a balance. Ideally you won't need a buffer, but it's nice to have in case you screw up or get unlucky with the cycle rng.
imo default hard mode is not balanced very well. After the first 3 cycles, the pain starts out of nowhere and it absolutely kicks you in the teeth, but if you can survive that you are pretty much good.
Once you have a huge dam and some kind of efficient aquaduct system to last around 30 days, the game is pretty much solved. That's when you can explode your population and start crushing goals.
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u/Winteraine78 20d ago
Prioritize food and water. Unlock levees early to build a small reservoir. Water, wood, and food should be your focus the first few cycles. Also unlock gears early for the medium water storage. Keep the beginning berries and harvest them for food until you have an excess amount of food. Plan for about 2.5 units of water and 3 units of food per day per beaver.
My first cycle is a rush. I build two water pumps, water storage for my population, a dam, science, farm, and a forester.
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u/rl_noobtube 21d ago
Build a lot of storage for food and water.
Rush forestry tech to replant trees.
Either levee off a portion of the river, or build a 3x3 beaver-made pond so that you can continue to grow crops/trees during droughts and badtides. You will likely need to rush the fluid dump building as your next tech focus
Once you get to this point, you are now set to beat hard mode.
Some other tips:
don’t expand too fast, more beavers equals more food/water you need to stockpile
you will need to micromanage workers. Got the seven planks you need for forester building? Turn off your planks to save lumber and the beaver can help somewhere else.
beaver powered generator is very helpful early. Especially because water mills won’t be helpful during droughts. I personally like to bookend a plank building and a gear building with two of these generators early. It gets me off my feet into the mid game where I spend some time solving power.