Timberborn – How to Survive (Starting Tips)

Guide on How to Survive

All credit goes to goto64!

Seasons

The game has two seasons, wet season and dry season.

In the dry season the river will quickly dry out. Once this happens, your land is no longer irrigated and all crops will stop growing.

The crops will also die after some days, but any crops that were ready for harvesting can still be harvested until they die (berries stay alive longer than carrots and potatoes).

Make sure you have food and especially water stored up before the dry seasons start.

Dry season one starts on day 19 and ends on day 21 (so it lasts 3 days). Cycle two then starts.

Dry season two starts on cycle 2 day 19 and ends on day 33 (so it lasts 15 days)

Food

One gatherer is enough initially.

Build a farm on day 3, so it is ready on day 4. Assign two workers to the farm (default is only one).

A single farm can support about 60 carrot plots or 80 potato plots. Basically you want enough plots to have the farmers harvesting or planting constantly once the first crops are ready.

Potatoes cannot be eaten raw, so you need a grill to process them into grilled potatoes. Note that grilled potatoes take up 4 times more storage space, so grill them as you need them.

I recommend having your farmers prioritize planting during the wet season, so they replant each field right after harvesting it. Once dry season starts, prioritize harvesting instead.

In the dry season, once your farmers run out of work due to the drought, you can reassign them to pick berries if any berries are still left.

A 60 plot carrot farm will get you through the first dry season just barely, but having a mix of carrots and potatoes is probably best. They also provide different nutrition bonuses.

A second farm with potato fields is very useful for the longer second dry season. Make sure you also have logs in stock to run the grill in dry season.

Other Tips

The first thing to unlock with science should be the forester.

Once the forester is built, remember to use the “plant trees and bushes” button to assign him some work, or he will just sit in his tower all day. Prioritize planting close to your colony, to minimize travel time.

Your tree plantation needs about 120 trees to maintain a constant supply.

The only powered structure you need in the demo is the carpenter. You can power it with either a power wheel or a water wheel. If you have a worker to spare, use the power wheel.

Build the carpenter right next to your power generator to minimize the resources needed for power shafts.

Use your explosives to demolish the barrier inbetween the bushes to have a wider area irrigated.

Optinally use science to unlock dynamite, and increase this lake further inland. This will also increase the water reservoir held by your dam.

Note: Detonating dynamite while a beaver is close to it will kill the beaver. Use this tip as you like.

I recommend building an extra storehouse in cycle two, to keep enough food stocks. Set the storehouses to desire different resources (like keep potatoes only in one) to avoid beavers moving stuff between the storehouses for no benefit.

You can increase breeding rate by building a campfire. Build one early to boost your population quickly. (Housing may also be needed for them to breed, but the details are unclear)

However, you do not want more beavers than your food and water supply can handle, so be careful here. Remove the campfire if you get too many beavers.

A population of around 20 is manageable and gives you enough workers to cover everything. Have more beavers for more of a challenge.

Houses can be built on top of eachother, but then you need to research and build ramps for them to actually be accesible. This is not really worth it in the demo.

Building a dam can help keep your land irrigated during the first part of dry season and greatly improves your chances of surviving the second dry season.

Even with a dam you need about one full water tank per two beavers (full by the time the dammed up river dries out). You need one pump for every 3-4 tanks to keep them stocked.