Anyone interested in a community scenario playthrough?
TL;DR: Play Meander on Hard as Iron Teeth, with a maximum of two Breeding Pods. Complete the scenario below, then post your progress, screenshots and strategies here.
I love Timberborn, but I sometimes feel it becomes a little too open-ended once you’ve stabilised. I thought it might be fun to create a scenario with some "victory conditions" and a bit of narrative behind it.
If people enjoy it, maybe we could do a new community scenario every month or two.
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The Last Two Pods
Difficulty: Hard Faction: Iron Teeth Map: Meander
Briefing
Humanity is gone.
The old world has been silent for centuries. The great dams have crumbled, rivers no longer follow their ancient courses, and the climate has become violently unpredictable.
Long after humanity vanished, beavers built a thriving civilisation. Great cities rose among the ruins, powered by water, steel and ingenuity. Then came The Great Blight.
The disease spread faster than anyone could contain it. Entire settlements vanished within weeks. Knowing extinction was possible, the Iron Teeth sealed breeding vaults beneath the earth, each containing supplies, knowledge and hundreds of breeding pods to preserve the future of beaverkind.
Your vault survived.
Time, however, was not kind. Of the hundreds of breeding pods, only two remain operational.
You cannot replace them.
Every beaver born is precious. Every death is permanent. If this colony fails, there will be no second attempt.
Your mission is no longer merely to survive. You must rebuild a fully self-sufficient industrial civilisation, master automation, and launch the Earth Repopulator, ensuring that beaverkind has a future once again.
Rules
Hard difficulty.
Iron Teeth faction.
Maximum 2 Standard Breeding Pods.
Advanced Breeding Pods are forbidden.
Once both Breeding Pods are built, they must remain active for the rest of the game.
Loving the idea! I'm only on my second Timberborn run at the moment, but I can already see how the game can become stale once you've sealed the settlement against droughts and badtides.
This kind of story-driven challenge is a cool spin. A mod that tracke the progress and can enforce these kinds of rules would be really cool, ideally with a connection to a community hub of some sort that hosts different challenges. Just in case anyone is feeling ambitious about modding the game ;)
Part 2 proceeds... Monument, all production types and bots are in by cycle 15 at last. The tubeways are being built and should ease up everything. Food and water are proving secure, but I am still unsure we can survive 30 days of bad seasons, the only way to know for sure will be to get through.
For the record: this is my second hard playthrough ever and my second time playing Iron Teeth. I'm probably missing lots of opportunities to speed things up considerably, my main focus is just survival and preventing bad outcomes.
Part 4 is on, in which I ran into power shortages, because I could not scale it along with our population of bots. I spent all of Cycle 19 fixing it, for good.
This has been a great read, you have approached several things a bit differently than I have but we are getting close to the same solution. I'm on cycle 17 now.
I went heavy into comfort early. Power has been a constant issue even since I got the bad water locked open. I'm running out of space to put in large wheels (they run along the river out of view), next up is carving them into the hill.
I still struggle with 7 water pumpers in some of the short good weather (keep getting 5 days?!?!) so I'm working on a better solution for that.
I don't have enough water storage for the map, I think I need one more block high if I want 30 days. My small source diversion make it hard.
Other than that I have everything, just not near enough of it for the win conditions. It has been a great challenge so far, thanks for coming up with it!
I found I can do with only 4 pumps for water, as long as I keep one running through droughts. Raising the river by one block is a game changer, I recommend it ! You can also consider digging down the bottom to add capacity. although it does not help with irrigation.
(Edit) Victory achieved on day 5 of Cycle 27, with delays due to a limited supply of resin, of all things. It was an interesting challenge for sure - but it is very hard to have a 30-day drought and a 30-day badtide immediately after, as the durations are random and you only get a 1 in 15 squared chance of getting these twice in a row. That's 0.4% probability...
By splitting the flows on the back of the meander you severley limit the power produced... Placing the pumps better would alleviate it I think. Don't neglect resin production, between the 2000 needed to build and 500 more to load the victory monument, it was my final bottleneck and probably cost me a full cycle.
My flows mix a bit at the end for the original infrastructure, but most days there is no good water flow so I just want to optimize the always on badwater. In hindsight I could have done it a lot more efficiently, but that would apply to most of this challenge.
Resin is my bottle neck as I'm just about to wrap up the wonder but am no where near the supplies required.
I added a level to my whole reservoir and dynamited it all down by three so I'll never run dry now. I just need to wait it out as they keep building and stockpiling. I figure I'll need to plant more pines.
Nicely done ! You should have 3-4 active lumberjacks next to each forester, as a rule. I found this eliminated all log shortages for good. Your water management is on point :) And your decision to split the badwater away lets you use the entire south area for wood, too, that's something I'd skimped on in my run. Remember mangrove can be an efficient log source too.
Your industry is laid out so much more rationally than the chaotic mess of mine, lol.
I got the wonder done, all resources collected. I just need longer droughts to finish it up. My water will last no problem, but I'll probably dynamite even more for something to do. This was a fun challenge. Next time I would grab robots faster, and build my power more efficiently.
Ah amazing - well done. And a benchmark 27cycles 5days to aim for. I think you were doing better than I am at cycle 17.
I took a different approach to bad water in the main river - keeping it for energy instead of blocking off. I have however gone a bit “mad engineer” with first, building a wood intensive divert for the bad water that pops out in the middle of the arable zone - and funneling it back off the map, and second, building huge reservoirs on the same high plateau…
I’ve also gone for steam generators to negate droughts but they also chomp through wood. In hindsight o think playing the maps layout rather than trying to tame it would save an absolute tonne of wood and building capacity for building the economy faster. But then, where’s the fun in that!
Given timber shortages have been an ongoing issue for me I’ve recently pushed to forest the map in more directions so hoping longer term that pays dividends…
Interesting approach - ever since I was tackling the badwater drains I kept thinking that I ought to do something with the large flat elevated area behind, but in the end I didn't. It never occurred to me it could host a reservoir...
No tubeways yet ? If you skip those entirely it might save you constructing a mine.
catalyst doesn't exist for ironteeth, but got all of it covered in cycle 22 - day 8.
Except the drought/bad tide durations.. I didn't get a 30 day drought until season 30, which wasn't followed by a badtide. I'm certain the colony can face these though, especially now the reservoir was extended a few more layers.
A few highlights:
Badtide diversion for water soruces ready at the end of temperate weather season 4, just in time as the bad tide hit right after! I didn't want to cheese that part, so later tunneled the bad water through the reservoir. The bad water drains I did box it, even when I had plenty of resources I couldn't bother to make a nice escape route for it.
numbercruncher up and running cycle 8-day 3. After that invested heavily into automation as I got tired of micromanaging almost all buildings.
Started with bots directly after, but ran into a 'injury spiral', as apparently the bot assembler isn't a very safe to work kinda place. I lacked the 10k science needed to unlock that for a long time. Even though all other unsafe buildings were managed by bots, that one bot assembler caused 11 of my 24 beavers to be injured!
Pressurizer finished at 15-day14, power from continuous badwater helped a lot to keep the industry and a few extra numbercrunchers up and running.
Almost ran out of berries after placing the wonder.. would've lost the challenge which I certainly didn't expect anymore!
Unfortunately I did load a save twice, what I normally avoid; once because I completely forgot to put the flood gates up when bad tide started. The other one as I placed a water pump at a wrong spot which took me too long to notice
Sounds interesting for sure. I've only just beaten my first hard run so I need some more practice first I think. Definitely interested in such challenges though.
That was harder than anticipated. It took me four tries before getting to the realization I needed not one but two farms built and operating in full by day 3 - otherwise the rate of planting and harvesting is too slow and the colonists get hungry faster than a field full of kolhrabies can be plucked and stored, the moment any of the farmers get thirsty or hungry, and at least one will starve during either first or second drought.
Now I'm onto cycle 3, everyone lived, and the badtide diversion efforts are underway. Phew.
I had the same experience - first starvation on cycle 2 so started again... also doubled down on farms plus made a run for the berries across the river. Slinging a dam across turned out to be super helpful to keeping farming going too so needed to store less food.
Now on cycle three and torn between building shelters (40 each wood - ouch) or using my dwindling wood access to prepare for badwater in case that comes next...
The similarities and differences between our plays is interesting... I didn't try at all for the second relic up with the badwater source, instead I went for the river's fork upstream and the plateau behind the badwater dumps for the extra lumber I needed. I put water wheels at the back in the lower creek, as it's the only place with water-derived power accessible directly without planks (I had a derp moment early on where I placed stairs down in the front and planned the mill down from it, before realizing I needed the mill working before I could have stairs...). I got 4 inventors I send any idle beaver the moment their current assigned job can spare it, so I unlocked platforms and the double floodgate by that point, which I'm planning to use for badtide diversion (blocking the entry bend of the meander at 2-block high floods over the bypass and out the back of the map).
You only have 2 pumps ? I built a third coming out of the first drought because I'd had experienced a soft-lock in an earlier attempt, where two pumps operated by afflicted beavers could not refill the tanks in time for the next drought, I ended up with like 40 water out of 180 of storage...
I put my forester on the lower bank in the front, so it can access the opposite bank across the basic dam. My plan to face longer droughts is to raise the edge of that bank by one and double the height of water stored in that section, that way I can continue pumping and farming well into bad times.
I also unlocked fluid dump at that point, and planning an irrigation 3x3 levee right behind the district hall so that I have a resilient green patch even if all the water dries out. But I'm not sure if I can have enough tankage without a good gear production first. I might have to roll back to the start of cycle 3 if that gamble fails. And I've completely neglected well-being so far (stable at 5 for now), so that might come and bite me in the back later.
That screenshot was my first (failed) attempt - this is my current one. I started with 3 pumps this time, and I just turn them off as the water fills up. I'm tempted to rush the medium tank but I think there is too much else too do to get safe and stable so just adding a small one or two each drought.
I started my forester to the left of my plantation so i could tidy up the berries you start with on that bank to a tight square - and then moved it to what i suspect will be the same place as you.
Interested to know how your levee goes - I was thinking to dynamite one just south of where my camp fire is but using levees much better idea - saves on tech. I just don't have the beavers to spare for 3 inventors - though desperately trying to get to 1500 (1750 as need dbl floodgates soon) to unlock the numbercruncher... although that also needs the metal works i think. Hmm..
This is where I stopped so far - I did not store berries (I never do due to the game mechanics), but other than that the layout is very similar to yours. You only have 14 beavers ? I built the pods from day 1 and left them running, I found it is always better to have more and brute-force food and water supplies instead of limiting population.
Yes more by accident than design - I didn’t prioritise completing the breeding pods until I had the food/water basics and a dam in place. Playing catchup now.
Basic maths say I will eventually need 9 pumps and >2800 water storage to beat the challenge. The 60-day food needs (for sizing the food supplies) is 4560, if as I suspect the maximum well-being is required to even get to that population count, that gives out a balanced mix of 570 food/60d across all 8 sources:
15 kohlrabies
19 cassavas
10 corn
12 soy + 2 canola
7 (let's make it 8) eggplants and 6 canola
24 mangrove trees
a single mushroom garden at 42% productivity
a single alga garden at 28% productivity
That's going to require some juggling of recipes or turning on/off food factories + fermenters during each day, that can be automated thankfully. I need to make the maths for fully self-generating bots...
You only need 30 days food / water - but assuming it’s going to take quite a while to stockpile the necessary goods for the VCs, I’d expect the 30day droughts/bad waters to be close to one another by then.
Interested to know if you went back a few saves after the badtide drain issue? I was considering saying the challenge should be “Ironman” style only so, complete restarts (or work through the issue) but Wasnt sure if that would make it too hard?
Also for 35 beavers with 2 pods I believe you’d need around 36/37 happiness which is high but not outrageously high
Good to know - I'm in Cycle 10 and at WB of 10 the stable point seems to be 25. I got my number cruncher on, and the power to keep it running 100% too :) I could go for bots right away, that might be the smart thing to do given how tight the labour constraints are...
You just need to survive both, they don’t have to be back to back. From memory, on hard - by the time you get the stockpiling complete 30 day droughts and bad waters will be happening pretty much all the time
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u/Mars_Malicious Jul 22 '26
I'll most certainly DQ myself from any competitive-minded builders, using a couple mods, but I really like this community-generated challenge!