soniggs' Farmers » How to play

What ever you decide that you are going to be in the end, the beginning is nearly the same for everyone. To be able to purchase abilities and earn some money for tools and items, you have to take care of your farm a bit. Doing that in the 4th game minute will be still be in good time. So let's start hunting a bit. Discovering the wood bordering your farm, you will find some creatures soon. Don't mess with anything above Level 1 until you are coequal. If 4 mins have passed you will receive a message, saying that you have to feed your cattle, otherwise it will starve. And you should better do so. Go to the field where the wheat is growing. Every 60 seconds, a new plant is sprouting there. With the 'attack'-option you may attack those plants and if it has no more health left, you will see an item laying on the ground. Repeat that, until no more plant is left, gather the dropped wheat, move to your grazing land, where your cattle remains and drop the gathered wheat. Now you can see that some of your rats are surrounded by the unholy-aura. That means, this creature is well fed, it will move 10% faster (for rats this means about nothing ^^) and it won't starve for the next 5 mins. Rats that didn't get any wheat to feed, will starve soon. They won't drop any meat too. The best would be to kill those ones now. It's the same progress like farming the wheat. Always take care of at least two of your rats, crabs or whatever you breed. To receive offspring, there have to be a minimum of two units remaining.

Now go on like this for some minutes. Try to keep as many rats alive as you can. For two rats you already have, you will receive a new gnawer after 60 seconds. And for every baby-rat born, your farmer will gain expierience (in both ways: The one you need to win and the one you need to level up).

If your farmer has low health turn back home (that is the building on the cut grass, with some flowers standing around....). Here you will regenerate much faster.

Fighting neutrals will give additional expierience and also some itmes you'll need. Especially the fairies in the eastern and western forest own things that you might need later. You should really locate them as soon as possible.

After 20 minutes of playing like this, you should decide, what you are going to be. You may choose between 3 different basic types of specializations. No one will squeeze you to not combine them. Do what you think you can handle best. But to give you some knowlege without typing the whole day, I will only explain the basic types for now.

The Farmer:
This one has a special binding to the nature, he takes care about his environment, he doesn't like violence and trys to avoid fighting where ever he can. Spending every coin in your farm, you will be the owner of an impregnable stronghold. Your land has a good quality, so your plants grow fast, your cattle is healthy and gives all you need in life. In your leisure time you love to hang around near lagoons and fish or tinker some useful tools making work more easy and your farm more safe. What you don't need will be given back to nature. The foresters will be thankful for this gestures and be sure that they they are going to pass back one day .

The Warrior:t
Farming was never what your were going to do in future. Your hammer saw more blood, than nails and pales, you don't like to work, you love to fight. Every coin is spend in weapons and armor. Instead of hiring workers, you hire mercenaries. You respect the foresters for the itmes they drop only and the takers to the left and to the right already know your name. Your farm degenerates, your cattle starves, but wayne. What you need in life will be stolen and anyone, going to hold you off, will taste your steal. The foresters don't like what they see, when they look at you. They will send their best warriors regulary to teach you some manners. And every bloodshed will increase their fury and their strenght. Better be careful. The day one thing resists your blade may come.

The Mage:
As a mage you don't like muckraking. While moving out to study fairies and other foresters with magic potential, your workers will do the job. Moving alone through the dark wood is no problem for you. You already know some strong spells becoming a doom for any attacker. While combining different ingredients you create mixtures that cure everything. So there's no need to rest, no need to eat, no need to drink. Your bindings to the populace of fairies let them become powerful ally for you and that is not the worst. Training your spells, gathering ingredients and not taking care of other foresters made some of them really angry, but as long as you got the fairies with you, nothing will happen... or might there be an even stonger race hidden in the wood?

Shopping in town the first time
There are different buildings in town, everyone selling different items, ressources and units. Going to town the first time (that would be around min 20) you may have goods ammounting to 500-1500 gold. You recognize soon: This ammount insn't that much. However it is enough to get a tool, unit or item, that speeds up the farming a lot. An easy way to earn some money is fishing. You can fish near any lagoon. And to make it more easy as it already is, I put a logoon in the close-by of every farm. Having a twine (droped by fairies) and a tendril lumber, you could purchase the fishing-rod recipe in the tool shop for 250 gold. Have this tool in inventory, just move near any lagoon and wait. About every 15 seconds your farmer pulls a very big one out of the water automatically. Nothing else you have to do. Just stand, wait and gather all the fish at your feet. You won't believe, but there are disadvantages too. Cause you have to be near a lagoon, there is nothing else you can do. The only other unit, that could carry this work is the fisher, but this guy is not that cheap, eh? And did you know there are also creatures that belong to the submerged populace? This guys are not just harmless fish and they really don't like fishing people.

What you also could do is purchasing a lumberjack. Did you already see this nasty tendrils sprawling aound everywhere? Tendril lumber is very valueable and the lumberjack will make short work of them. He may also be used to cut normal trees to shorten the distance you have to walk between some points. And finally this unit has a small inventory, so if he doesn't chop any trees, he could go to town to do some shopping for you.

Having some gold left, you should also have a look at the toolshop again. There is an item called 'poision-trap'. Maybe you share some stuff with another taker nearby and want to get rid of those neutrals blocking the way, just put a trap there. Or if you fear an assasination, well this thing could save your skin.

While there are lots of creatures on the one hand, there are also some plants on the other hand. Most plants are easy to harvest, like Wheat or Reposing Herbs. But not every crop is harmless. Ever tried to mess with a Tendril?

Killing any unit - except your own creatures - will affect your carma. Having a bad carma, you will gain some money every 60 seconds, but you may also be the victim of some disasters. Having good carma will add some neutral species to your friends. You gain much more gold every 60 seconds, as you would, having a bad carma. Your carma will improve if you kill bandits or support the town in sieges. Be careful if you attack miners or caravans. This units belong to the townies who will become very angry if getting robbed.

Nearly everything you do will affect your expierence. You ally needs 250.000 for every player belonging to, to win. Some units you lose will affect your expierence in a negative way. Most important is to not let your cattle starve. If it does, you will lose a large ammount of expierience.

So far so good, this should be enough. I spend a lot of time writing tooltips, so you won't have to purchase any items or abilities that function you absolutely won't understand. But one thing I should maybe highlight a bit, if not done enough. I was always talking about foresters, fairies, the submerged populace... what do I mean with that?
Well, everything you do will have consequences. It would be too easy to go scot-free being selfish and predatorily. This map is really large and it is not the end of the world if your farmer gets defeated one day. Other players have the same hive of work like you and maybe never show up where ever you are. That could make you feel free to do everything, but beware. Killing too many wolves for example will make the wolves starting to fight. They will suddently attack your farm or abush your farmer unanticipated in the wood or on the way to town. Fishing all the day will make submerged creatures leave the water, acting alike. Even annoying another player all the time could make a friendly species support him with attacking your units or sending strong warriors to his farm. Being the bad guy is not the easy way to succeed, as you can see. If there is any race you feel it might be stressed by your actions, clear the air by sending some gifts. Just put some valuable items on near a point you see units belonging to this race and maybe it will forgive. But be careful of what items you choose. Giving a fishing-rod to any submerged creatures will not solve any problem.