When you first start up the game, the main menu has several different selections- start a new game, load a game, change your settings, bring up the wiki, and exit.






Click on Options to change the difficulty rating, graphics quality, full screen, and sound. You will also see that you can click F5 for a quick save, F8 for a quick load, F12 for a screenprint, Select the numbers 1-0 to select the corresponding settlement (with your numbers at the top of the keyboard), use the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on your numberpad to see the corresponding resource bar, and use spacebar to pause or unpause the game. You can also change whether or not you'd like to see the tutorial, have crafting default to multi-run (make an infinite number of an item), houses autopopulate (you might find that later on you'd prefer they didn't autopopulate), show massing attackers, auto-refill used misc (eg, your healer uses a bandage that is single-use and you would like the bandage to get replaced automatically after battle), extra combat text (this tells you things like, you have an archer in reserves and they shot a monster for 10 damage), and old style backgrounds.

Start a New Game.

Once you've started a new game, you are taken to the first settlement, where you are greeted by six plots and a Central Settlement Plot.

To the left are several menu options. The main menu button is in the top left corner. Underneath it are World Map, Resources, Skill Books, World Skills, Plotline Scrapbook, Science Lab, Character List, Tasks, Adventure Quests, Production Menu, and Game Speed. Click the World Map to see where your settlements are, and anything your scouts have uncovered (like bosses or enemy lairs), and your Doomsday status (how many doomdsday points you have accrued - hover over the wheel for more information). Click Resources to see all of your resources, broken up by the era they belong to. Click World Skills to see what levels your world skills are at (you need them for research). Click Skill Books to see any skill books you have acquired. Click Plotline Scrapbook to see the scrapbook (which is the story of the game and tells you what's going on), Book of the Collector (which shows you the special boss loot that you have received so far), and the Book of the Slayer which shows your progress for killing each type of enemy (The Game Progress Deed Book has not yet been implemented.). The Science Lab is unlocked in a later era, so skip that for now. Click Character List to see all your villagers and their equipment and stats - it's a helpful overview. Click Tasks to see special tasks for each era that gets you a little bonus once completed. Adventure Quests are unlocked a little later on (these are special quests that will eventually progress the story, although there are a few that are just for fun). Click Production Menu for the Production List that will be very helpful later on when you actually start crafting things. The Game Speed defaults to 3 but you can make it slower or faster, or pause by hitting the Pause button or with your space bar.




















The top of your screen is dedicated to your resources. You choose which resources you want to see easily by clicking on each slot and picking the resource (right click to remove). Click or type with your numberpad (not the top of your keyboard- just the numberpad) 1, 2, or 3 to cycle through three different menus of items.




The right side of your screen is split into three sections.
The very top is the in-game date and time. Just under that is the settlement threat overview. The top left number is your settlement defense rating, hover over it to see what effects your defense. The number below that is how many enemies are grouped up, waiting to strike your settlement (and that can happen at any time - although not right at the beginning of the game; don't panic). Right click that number to bring up the Diplomacy screen, which allows you to reduce the monster count, or you can simply attack the monsters first (which does not account for your defenses and does not bring you any loot - but it's still good experience for your villagers and allows you to control when you go into combat). The percentage on the top right is the likelihood of a surprise attack, and is at 0% when you are just starting. The number below that is the percentage chance of a scout getting attacked (this number increases when you have monsters grouping for attack - another reason not to wait for them to attack you!) while exploring the world map. The circle in the middle of these four numbers is the weather, which influences how badly the monsters want to attack your settlement.



Underneath all that, you will see some more stats. The name of the settlement, the era you're currently in, Population (each villager is a family), Global Supply Bonus (you can spend diplomacy points on that), Global Storage Bonus (again, diplomacy points), Diplomacy (you get this by doing things on the world map), Settlement Supply Bonus (effected by the Transport upgrades in the Settlement Center), and Settlement Max Population. Underneath that, you can see how much power your settlements are creating, Electricity, Oil, and Coal - these things come into play much later).





The last box on the right is the Event Log text box, which tells you things like, a building has been completed, a crafter has finished production, a villager has healed, or someone created a bonus or elite item. You can make the font size bigger or smaller, and turn off the options to see healing or crafting bonuses.
At the bottom of the screen is a list of settlements, which you can click to move to that settlement, or the arrows on the side of the screen to cycle through. It also shows a progress bar of how close you are to finding the next settlement (there are ten total). Under that is the Unallocated Workforce - this is where villagers end up once they've finished, for example, constructing a building. The middle of that window is where the game tells you it's paused (in all caps, GAME PAUSED).


















Each settlement has six plots, and clicking on an empty plot brings up the Build Menu where there are four categories - Housing, Resource Gathering, Crafting and Factories, and Research and Misc. These are divided up by Era.












You can click the "cheat sheet" at the top to see what all the buildings are for that era (since you have to research them, you won't otherwise always know ahead of time what will be available) and how to unlock them and when they will next be upgraded. For example, Era 1 shows a shack that holds one family and can be upgraded in Era 2 to hold 2 families, and will be researched with Fruit and Veg.







In the center of each settlement is the Settlement Center, which is divided into six sections; Storage, Walls, Health, Guard Posts and Milita, Transport, and Protection and Repair. Upgrading storage allows you to hold more resources (default is 10). Upgrading Walls helps with settlement defense, as does Guard Posts and Milita and Protection and Repair. Upgrading health gives your villagers more HP. Guard posts allow your villagers to train their Warrior skill. Transport increases Supply (how quickly resources move around). You will see for Era 1, that upgrading your Health or your Protection and Repair will advance your era (so don't upgrade them until you think you are ready for Era 2!). The top of this window also has the building cheat sheet "Buildings (View Mode)".

Right click a character's portrait to see their stats (once, of course, you've built a shack and have populated your settlement - see the next section).
Each character has five main stats and three secondary stats. The main stats are Strength, Intellect, Stamina, Dexterity, and Charisma. The secondary stats are HP, Status, and Health. Each main stat directly correlates with a skill, which you can see by hovering over the word in the character screen. Each character has up to five stars in each main stat, and up to ten in Status and Health. Hover over HP to see what affects that stat (things like Stamina, accessories, and certain feats add to HP). Status is important for leadership, and health is important for HP.

















Below the Stats are four icons. The first is Send Scouting, click it to bring up the Scouting screen, where you can send characters out scouting (more on that later). Second icon is Read Skillbook, which will bring up a screen showing you all the skillbooks you have accumulated. The third icon is Quester/Defender, where you can choose if you'd prefer that character to be available for questing, or to stay at home defending. You can change it at any time. The fourth icon is Reserves/Front Line, where you choose if you want that character to be on the front line in combat (melee damage) or if you'd prefer they stay behind the line of fire where they can do ranged damage at the end of each combat turn (more on that later). Again, you can change that at any time.


The second part of the characters' stats is their skills. They can only have 15 skills, but you can remove ones you don't want in the Feats menu (more on that in a moment).

















Next is equipment. Each character can have armor, a helm, a melee weapon, a ranged weapon or shield, two miscellaneous items, a production or research tool, a supply tool, and a pet. These are mostly items that you will be crafting (pets are obtained via boss battle loot).
























After equipment is the nitty gritty on combat stats. Divided into three sections, you have melee offense stats, ranged offense stats, and defense stats. Hover over each item for a breakdown.



























The last column is Gameplay Stats, Title, Crafting Stats, and current skillbook progress (a bar that shows how much of a book the character has read. Books are obtained via rewards from World Map adventures - exploring caves, fighting enemies, etc). Gameplay stats is pretty self-explanatory. A character gains Titles as they gain skills and they help you differentiate between your characters (if you so choose).















You can spend money to increase your characters' main stats by clicking "Feats & More" which takes you to Character Customization (change their looks, voice, and name) and Feats.























The Feats menu is at the bottom right and there are six total: Main Stats which includes Advanced Training (where you pay to increase stats) and Military Training (where you pay to give them warrior skill, which can be obtained via Guard Posts for free); General Feats; Combat Feats; Weapon Feats; Crafting Feats; and Remove Skills (each character can only have 15 different skills at a time and occasionally they will learn one that you would like to remove, in order to make room for one you would prefer they have instead).








The very bottom of this screen is the Option backgrounds and discs, which you can use to more easily differentiate between your villagers.




Example of late game character stats.

You start with two settlements, each of which can hold six buildings. The first thing you must do is build a shack. Click on a tile and select the "shack" from the menu under "stone age." The shack is the only building that builds itself (every other building will require you to drag a villager to it). It also requires no resources. Go ahead and build three shacks in each settlement, which will recruit three people to each settlement (later on, you'll only need two houses in each settlement). After your first shack is completed, you will be able to build several more buildings. Choose a member in each settlement to be your constructor (generally the person with the most strength which is the stat that effects construction skill - but you knew that already because earlier you hovered over Strength in the character stats screen and saw the skills that Strength effects). Have the first settlement build a Woodcutter, Gatherer, and StoneCutter. Build a Crafter and Hermit Hut in the other settlement. These will need wood and stone to build, so once your Woodcutter has been built, immediately choose a villager to start cutting wood (drag a villager from their home onto the woodcutter). You already know to pick someone with high strength, since that is the stat that helps Lumberjacks. After you've accumulated two wood, you can build the stone cutter. Again, immediately have a villager start collecting stone. You can only hold ten of each resource at the moment, so continue building your remaining buildings.

Scouting:
(PIctured: Late game scouting)
At this time, you can choose a couple villagers to start scouting (hopefully with high dexterity, since that is the stat that effects scout skill). This will allow you to progress the game, find resources (including some that cannot be found any other way), increase fighting skills, locate bosses, and locate new settlements. Occasionally, your scout will be attacked instead of finding something cool. The game will force you into battle which you can run away from if you prefer, at the expense of one Doomsday point. (More on battles later.) Scouting is very important. The skill itself gives you initiative in battle (allowing you to attack first each turn). When you're in the Scout screen, you can see how likely each scouting outcome is - Settlement Seeking, Items/Skills, Help, Quests, Bosses, and Merchant. Items/Skills bring up loot boxes you can pay a small fee for, or a few experience points in a World Skill, or a loot box unlocked by sending out villagers with certain skills. Help is when your scout uncovers a family being attacked by monsters - you send out some fighters to kill the monsters, and you get rewarded by the grateful family (this also reduces your doomsday points by 1). Quests unveil things like caves where you send fighters to kill monsters and get loot. Bosses are epic battles with outstanding loot. You can also send your scouts out to find merchants, who buy random items from any era you've unlocked, and sell two items to you at a premium. You get a little bit of Trade (a world skill) experience whenever you buy or sell from a merchant. A high trade skill means you make more money (or lose less, if you're buying - which you probably won't need to do much of). Merchants will show up randomly, even if you don't scout for them. There is also the chance that your scout won't uncover anything at all, or will be attacked by an enemy or ambushed (ambushed is definitely worse! You will almost assuredly need to run away from those battles). You can also chose to "Avoid combat but increase chance of no result." The game defaults to "no preference". Underneath those options, you can see how long your scout will be on the world map, away from their settlement. Under that, is a list of which villagers have scouting skill, and which villagers do not. You can send several scouts out in a row from this screen.



Now your settlements are starting to hum. You are bringing in wood, stone, and food (and got a bonus for doing so in the Tasks screen!). You can now build your Crafter and Hermit Hut, which allow you to research and craft items and buildings. Research requires a food source (each era has its own), and often a skill as well. Some items require you to have crafted (not just unlocked) an earlier item. Assign villagers to the crafter and hermit hut. Go ahead and craft some stone tools and equip them. Have your villager in the hermit hut research House Design and then the log cabin. You can now upgrade each house to hold two families apiece. At this point, you may wish to upgrade two houses in each settlement and delete the third (leaving you with 4 villagers in each settlement). Continue researching and crafting. Once you've unlocked the Tin Mine and Smelter, build them and assign villagers to work them, paying attention to the villagers' stats (there's no penalty for not matching up stats with skills, they just build up skill a little slower).

At this point, you are...

• collecting wood, food, stone, tin ore, tin ingot
  
• researching everything available
  
• crafting and equipping everything available
  
• familiarizing yourself with the character stats
  
• sending out scouts
  
• engaging in battles
  
• clearing the world map of special encounters (often by engaging in battle)
  
• buying and selling from various merchants (mostly selling!)
  
• gaining valuable experience in various skills
  
• preparing yourself to enter Era 2

How do you know when you're ready to enter the next era?
You don't! But you can rest assured that once you've got the best possible equipment on your villagers and have researched and built everything available, you are probably pretty close to being ready.
However, if you find that combat is too difficult (your villagers die or almost die), do not advance the era! Train up your villagers as much as possible - send scouts out, engage in combat, and fight available bosses. You might need to have your crafter grind out extra shields or weapons in order to create a few "fine" quality (these have increased stats). You might need to have your front line fighters increase their warrior skill. You might need to experiment with combat strategy. You might want to buy feats and stat increases for key villagers.

You control when you advance the era, and combat only becomes more challenging.

Crafting is an important part of Settlements. This is how you will arm yourself against your enemies and advance technologically into the future.

You start by building a Crafter in one of your settlements and assign a villager to begin researching recipes and crafting items. At the beginning, you will be assembling stone and wood to make mostly ineffective yet crucial tools and weapons. Then you'll unlock tin in order to create a breastplate and skullcap. Equipping your villagers is key to unlocking and raising their skills (your villager cannot level up in Heavy Armor if they aren't wearing any!) so you want to make sure you do so early and often.

When you pull up the crafting screen, you will see researched recipes in white, unresearched but available recipes in blue, and unresearched and unavailable recipes in red. Hover over the red recipes to find out why you cannot yet research them. In the example below, my crafter is unable to research Tin Breastplate because she needs Researcher skill level 2 and someone needs to have crafted a Tin Ingot (which is done by the Smelter). The Tin Skullcap needs Crafter level 1 and the Tin Ingot to have been crafted. Once my Smelter has created a Tin Ingot, I will be able to research these recipes, since my researcher (in the Hermit Hut) already has Researcher 2, and my craftsman already has Crafter 1. So, my researcher will research the Breastplate and my craftsman will research the Skullcap. Eventually, my craftsman will unlock and build up the Researcher skill, but it hasn't happened yet and it doesn't hurt for the two villagers to share some skills. I can always remove the extra skills later if I need to.















Each item that your crafter creates has a chance of a bonus - either a "fine" quality of that item or an extra item is created, depending on the type. You can tell the difference by looking at the values on the resource. If there is a yellow number on top of a white number, that means you can create a "fine" quality. If there is only one number and it is white, then you can create 2 of that item when a bonus is triggered. You will receive a notification in your Events Log when this bonus is acheived. As your villagers become more skilled, the chances of them creating a bonus item increases.







Green platform means the resource pictured is of fine quality (the yellow number still represents the number of fine quality items; the white number still represents the number of normal quality items).




Purple platform means it's a special resource (pictured is marble which is only obtained via loot; you cannot mine it in a settlement).

Combat is inevitable and a lot of fun once you know what you're doing!

There are a few ways to find yourself in combat. Your scout might get ambushed, your settlement might get attacked, you engage a boss, or you save a family who is under attack (to name a few). You will have a maximum of four villagers in the front line (and sometimes only 2 depending on the type of event. 1 if it's your scout getting attacked) and a maximum of four villagers in the reserves (unless you are fighting at your settlement - in which case, all the villagers in that setllement will participate). The reserve villagers will attack at the end of each turn if they have a ranged weapon in their ranged/shield slot. Otherwise, they wait around to be called to the front line.
The enemy is a little different - they have up to eight front liners and any number of reservists.

The Front Line
These are your melee villagers. They will be dealing the brunt of the damage to the enemy. When you first start the game, you won't have many options for weapons, and they all nearly rely on the Strength stat. Later on that will change, but for now your villagers with high strength will make up your front line. Make sure you have them equipped as early as possible! Every little bit helps. Also, don't underestimate the Unarmed skill. It might be useful to have some villagers remain unarmed (although you can still give them other things to wear).

Under each villager's portrait are three icons. The first is an arrow, click it on that villager's turn to have their stance change to offensive, where they will deal extra damage at the expense of their defense (hover over the icon for details). The middle and default icon is the neutral stance. The third icon is the defense stance. These stances are very important for strategy so don't forget about them.

Next to each villager's portrait, you will see a line of icons. These are: melee weapon (if any), ranged weapon (if any), miscelleanous item (doesn't do anything right now), Dodge, Heal, Form Up! (give your teammates a damage, threat, and defense buff), Inspire! (give your teammates a buff to defense and offense plus a heal over time - but at the expense of your own threat level), Taunt!, and Exchange with Reserve. You will very rarely need to click the first two icons - this is for switching between a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. Your front line will receive a penalty for using a ranged weapon on the enemy's front line, and it's not often that you will want to do so.

For each front liner's turn, you will see some icons at the bottom of the screen. These are the attack options available to that character (levelling up certain skills will unlock different attacks). Choose one (default is a normal attack) and then click the enemy you wish to attack. If you hover over the enemy, you will see some stats to the left.

If you'd prefer not to attack and instead dodge, you will click the Dodge icon. (And perhaps first you will change your stance to defensive)

If you'd prefer to heal yourself and your teammates, click the Heal icon (you must have Combat Medic first, which can be obtained by using a healing item during combat - you would have equipped such an item prior to battle).

If you'd prefer to use a leadership skill, click the Form Up! or Inspire! icons.

If you'd prefer to taunt your enemies, click the Taunt! icon.

If you'd prefer to swap out a front liner with a reservist, click the Exchange with Reserve icon and choose a reservist. Your former front liner will automatically heal each turn.