Sengoku Dynasty – Ultimate Beginners Guide

The Basics

This game is very good, even though it’s not finished yet. It’s quite detailed and complex, so this guide will help you get started.

The Beach

After watching the opening video, you’ll start on a beach by yourself. You might not know what to do, so let’s go over the main controls.

To move, use the WASD keys. W and D move you sideways instead of turning. Use the mouse to turn.

You can change how you view the game by pressing V. There are four options: three from behind your character at different distances, and one from your character’s eyes. Try them all to see which you like best.

To do things in the game, mainly use the E and F keys. E is used more often. To talk to someone, press E. To trade with them, press F.

Hotkeys

(You can view hotkey assignments in the main menu under settings)

• L: Legend Screen. This shows your skills and perks.
• K: Quest Screen: Shows all active, completed, and failed quests.
• N: Dynasty Screen: Shows your Dynasty information including level, villages, population, and jobs.
• M: Map Screen: Pulls up the map of Nata Valley.
• Tab: Inventory screen: Opens your inventory and your tool hotkeys.
• 1 through = (top row of keyboard): Pressing any of these will equip or unequip the currently assigned tool or weapon for that key.
• Q: Quick Handcraft: Opens a radial menu that allows crafting of various items from common materials. This key can be used whether an item is currently in hand or not.
• Left Mouse Button: Standard action with the equipped tool or weapon.
• Right Mouse Button: Secondary action for equipped item. If there is no item equipped, it calls the quick-craft radial menu instead.
• Middle Mouse Button: Quick equip radial menu that allows you to quickly switch tools/weapons without the need for hitting the associated key.
• Esc: Cancels out of many screens and opens the main menu.
• CAPS LOCK: Engage walking speed. This slows you down but allows more precise movement in treacherous areas.
• Left Shift: Sprints, using available stamina. When stamina is depleted, sprinting will end.
• Left Control: Crouch. Handy for getting past low-hanging obstacles.

The Hud

The Screen Layout

At the top, you’ll see a compass. It might be hard to spot depending on your view, but it shows your direction. Important things nearby will show up inside the compass. If you haven’t found something yet, it appears as a “?”.

On the left side of the screen, you’ll see a list of steps for your current quest. When you finish a step, a line will appear through its text.

Below the quest list is your status. There’s a round circle that usually shows the Sengoku symbol. When you use a shrine, this changes to show the shrine’s patron. The number of dots at the top of the circle tells you how strong your current blessing is. For more about this, look in your Legends screen and click on “Way of the Monk”.

Next to the circle are three important bars:

1. Green bar (Energy): This slowly goes down over time. You refill it by eating and drinking. Eating works much better than drinking with the current drinks in the game. It’s really important to keep this green bar as full as you can!
2. Red bar (Health): This goes down when you fall from high places or when animals or bandits attack you. It will slowly go back up as long as you have energy, but this is very slow. Don’t count on it in a fight. You can use healing items to fill this bar up quickly.
3. Yellow bar (Stamina): This goes down when you use tools, attack with weapons, aim ranged weapons, or run fast. It starts filling up again soon after you stop doing these things. How fast it fills up depends on how much energy you have. More energy means faster stamina recovery. If you run out of energy, your stamina will come back very slowly. Try not to let this happen.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll see different messages. When you pick up items, it shows up here. Warnings also appear here. Sometimes these messages show up and disappear quickly, so keep an eye out!

In the bottom right corner, you’ll see a picture of what you’re holding. If you’re not holding anything, it just shows your hand.

That’s all the important stuff on the main screen.

Starting the Game

Now, let’s talk about where you start. You’re standing on a beach, wearing torn-up clothes. All you have is a torch and a piece of meat. Nothing else. What should you do next? That’s up to you to figure out!

This description covers all the main parts of the screen and what they mean, as well as setting up the starting situation for the player. It avoids using complicated words or gamer slang, while still providing all the important information from the original text.

First off, take a look around. You’ll find wreckage that washed up alongside you. Various items can be found in this wreckage.

It isn’t much but who ever said getting something for free is bad? Littering the beach sand, you’ll find a plethora of stones. While you’re looking around, grab up a stack of 25. You can watch your notifications to see how many you have. You can grab more but your inventory space is somewhat limited so you don’t want to overload yourself. You’ll need that space very soon.

Once you’ve finished with the beach, take a look at your quest. “Find Other Survivors.” You’ll see a quest marker in your compass. So, aim yourself toward that nice-looking archway in the rock to the south and go find yourself a friend!

Crafting and Building

Passing through the arch (and listening to the sound of the wind as you do), you’ll find yourself in a brand new, beautifully crated world. Take a moment to look around. Gorgeous, huh? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Up ahead, you’ll spy your quest marker hovering over another survivor washed up on shore. Your new friend! But, hey, wait. There’s something between you and her that you’ll need:

This is regular grass, not the kind used for smoking. To collect it, aim at it until you see the collection command. Then hold the E key until the circle around it fills up. You’ve now collected some grass. Get at least 6 pieces of grass in your inventory.

Next, go to the survivor and talk to her. Her name is Ako, and she’s the first character you’ll meet in Nata Valley. She came looking for the Peasant Kingdom like you, but had a rough journey. After talking to her, she’ll ask you to make an axe. To do this, look for sticks on the beach. Collect at least 6 sticks.

Now, hit Q for the quick craft radial

Choose Stone Axe. You need 3 stone and 3 sticks. Make sure you have 25 stones. After selecting it, the axe will appear in your inventory. Press Tab to access it, then click on the axe. Use E to equip it in slot 1, or drag it to any slot you prefer.

With the axe, your quest updates to chopping down a tree. Find a tree near a big rock. Use the 1 key or middle mouse button to equip the axe. The tree needs 5 hits to fall and 2 more to turn into logs. You can only swing 6 times before running out of energy. Hit it 4 times, rest, then 3 more times. You can cut the falling tree. Collect the 4 logs using E.

Large trees give 4 logs, small trees give 3. All trees need 7 hits total.

After getting the first log, make a hammer using Q. You need 3 sticks and 1 log. Equip it like you did with the axe.

Next, help Ako by making a campfire. You need 4 stone and 4 sticks. Gather more materials from sticks on the ground or from small trees.

And whack it with your axe four times. You’ll get some sticks, a chunk of firewood (which you’ll need later) and maybe a feather.

Take a second and look at the white bar next to the axe symbol in your hand. That’s the durability of the axe. Any item you hold will have that same white bar. As you use a tool or weapon, it will lose durability. When the white bar is gone, the item will break and you’ll need a new one. The game currently employs an auto-equip feature that takes any similar item from your inventory and puts it in the slot you’re currently using. So, if you make another axe now, when your currently equipped axe breaks, you’ll automatically have another equipped after a short animation. I suggest you always keep a spare of whatever tool you’re using in your inventory. I mean, really, how often are you checking the durability while you’re whacking away at tree? So, before you go make that campfire, make another axe and leave it in your inventory.

Of course, now you’ll need even more sticks! So, head across the path and up the hill until you see one of these:

Hold down the E key when prompted and you’ll gather up a few sticks from each one of these. It’s fast and easy and doesn’t require a tool. You can hold a maximum of 50 sticks in each inventory slot so take a few moments and gather up some.

Now, head back to Ako and equip your hammer. Right click to call up the construction radial menu:

Select Basic Structures:

Now select campfire. A ghost of the campfire will appear on the ground near your feet. The location of that ghost is dependent upon your perspective. You can move it around by walking and moving the mouse. If the ghost is red:

You can’t build. If it’s green:

You can. Confirm placement with a left mouse click and the ghost will change color to blue.

When you aim at this ghost with a hammer in hand, the materials required will appear along the left side of the hud. Left click (and hold) to swing the hammer. Each swing adds one material so you’ll need 8 total hits to finish the campfire.

With that done, the quest updates and you’ll need to build a tent, which needs 4 sticks and 6 grass. Yeah, you should have gotten it earlier, huh? Place the ghost of the tent near the campfire and beat on it until complete.

The quest will now direct you to speak to Ako. Exhaust her dialogue and the quest will update to a location further south. Time to go see if the rumors of the Peasant Kingdom are true or not!

Sosogi (What a Bummer)

Follow the road south to look for the village. You’ll see some rocks in the road. Take a moment to refill your stock to 25. Grab a few sticks as well and build up 50. Grab some more grass if you like but it’s not needed yet. You can craft 2 grass to make 1 straw. Grass isn’t an essential item but straw is. However, you’ll find a nice supply of straw up ahead so don’t clutter your inventory.

Along the way, you’ll run into this guy:

This person is irritating but friendly. He thinks you’re just washed up on the shore. If you keep talking to him, he’ll give you some food. You can also ask him questions if you’re curious.

In his camp below, you’ll find the first items you can take. Look for a pile of straw containers. These have random fishing items inside. Take any food you find and leave the rest for now.

After this, follow your quest marker to Sosogi village. The village is in bad shape when you get there.

Go to the person marked on your map. His name is Toshichi, and you’ll talk to him often. Tell him about the shipwreck to move the story forward.

Toshichi will help you start your own village. First, make an Adze using 3 sticks and 3 stones. Use Q to craft it and equip it.

Next, make planks. Chop trees to get logs. Hit each log once with the Adze to remove bark, then hit again to make 3 planks. For faster work, collect 18 logs, go back to Toshichi, and drop 7 logs in a pile. Use the Adze on this pile to make 21 planks at once.

Ask Toshichi for the bell. This lets you start your village.

The Bell Tower is the center of your village. You can only build within its area.

The game suggests building your first village in Sosogi. This is a good idea for new players as it’s flat and has some benefits. But you can build anywhere if you know the game well.

To start, find an open area near the burned tree south of Toshichi.

Equip your hammer, open your build menu and select “Village Structures.” You’ll find the bell tower here. Select it to bring up the building ghost. Place it where you want.

You’ll need the bell itself. 2 logs, and 8 planks. Once finished, the quest will update and, surprise surprise, you’ll have to talk to Toshichi again!

Now what? Oh, he wants you to build a house! Well we can do that! But! Before you do, you’ll be using your hammer an awful lot in the coming moments so take a second and turn one of your remain logs into a hammer. That all important spare! Done? Good. Let’s build a house!

You’ll probably have to make some room so break out your trusty axe. The ruined buildings need to be dismantled by hitting each one 6 times with the axe.

Tear one down.

Notice you’ll get some nice supplies. A few sticks, some charcoal (which you won’t use for a while but should hold on to), and from 1 to 4 planks. Good stuff. Once you’ve got a spot open, you can move on to the next section!

A New Home

The quest will walk you step-by-step through the process. You’ll need 8 logs to start (you should have 8) so let’s get that build radial up and select “Buildings” at the bottom.

Houses are at the top of this radial. Select the small house. The others are locked for now so ignore them.

When you first select any building, you will see the green outline if it can be placed and the red outline if there is something blocking. For the house, it looks like this:

All items you attempt to place follow this red/green rule. If the ghost is red, there will be warning messages on the left side of the screen like this:

???

Once you get a green outline, click to place. Look! A g-g-g-ghost!

Yep. Kind of like a spider deep into rigor mortis but that’s the base of your new home. Hit it with a hammer to add 8 logs and finish it.

Next up is the floor.

That’s 8 planks but you already have those too so get hammering.

Now we get to the fun part. The walls.

When building, you have several choices for each wall section:

1. Leave it as is
2. Press E to change the plank type, which changes how it looks
3. Press F to change the wall style

For your first house, it’s best to keep the default settings.

To build the entire house, you’ll need:

• 27 planks
• 32 sticks

You might need to chop more trees and use your adze to get enough materials. Go gather these if you don’t have enough.

Excellent. Great job! Or, did you take the easy way and go knock down a few more burned houses to get those planks? You did? Even better! You can have some cookie crumbs!

With the walls built, it’s time to move on to the roof!

Yeah, people are really annoyed if they go home and get rained on while they’re trying to sleep. Some people, right? Okay, so, you’ll need some stuff. Namely, 4 stone, 6 sticks, 2 logs and 8 planks. Got it all? Great. Hit it… literally.

Roof’s done so the house is done… nope! You still have work to do. The quest tells you to furnish the house. Look on the floor of your new house and you’ll see two new ghosts have appeared.

A straw mat to sleep on and a cooking heart to make yummy food. The straw mat is easy but you don’t have any straw! Now, you can make some straw by combining 2 grass with your Q radial or you can head east a little ways. You’ll see a bandit next to an ominous looking gallows. Don’t worry, this bandit is friendly… kind of. You can talk to him to learn the story about the gallows or move past into a small flat area where you’ll find a group of straw bundles on the ground. They look like this:

Grab them all for 105 straw. Straw stacks cap at 100 so you’ll need two inventory spaces for a few moments. Head back and complete the straw mat with 10 hammer blows. Feeling like Thor yet? Now onto the Sunken Hearth. This needs 10 stone, 4 firewood, and 2 planks. Remember those small trees? You need to chop down 3 more to get the 4 firewood. You should have everything else. And, voila! You have completed your first house!

Congratulations. You can have a cookie! Toshichi has it so go talk to him to get it.

Instead of cookie he gives you…a whole crapload of stuff to do! What the heck, man!

But talking to him unlocks a few new buildings. In the next section, we’ll discuss the woodcutter, an essential need for any builder in Nata Valley. Those quests will just have to wait!

The Woodcutter and You

Now, I Know Toshichi gave you a list of things to do to make people like you (as if the hammer in your hand couldn’t do the same thing, just faster) but you also have a friend on the beach that needs help so let’s start there. First off, the house needs an occupant. You could save it for Ako but what about you? Open the Dynasty Screen and select population.

You’ll see… yourself! The symbols here indicate homelessness and unemployment. Unemployment will cover a little later. Homelessness we can solve now. Click on your name. It will open a panel showing character information.

If you click on “Home” you’ll be able to select a village:

A list of houses will appear (for now just the one). Select a house then the bed that is indicated.

This action will give you a bed to sleep in. Now you have a place to live. For other characters that join later, you can give them beds as they arrive. The game doesn’t mind if multiple people live in the same house.

You can’t make characters work during normal gameplay. Work happens between seasons. To give someone a job, they need a bed first. No bed means no job. So when new people join your village, make sure you have beds ready for them.

The building menu has many options, but most are locked at first. You’ll unlock them as you play and complete quests. Finishing the house and talking to Sosogi unlocked some new items and buildings. The woodcutter’s hut is very useful. It lets you make planks, sticks, firewood, and bark in one place. It also gives you more items from each log. For example, you get 6 planks per log instead of 3. To build a woodcutter’s hut, open the building menu, choose production buildings, and select the woodcutter’s hut. Place it in an open area and start building.

All buildings are made in stages. You’ll need different materials for each part, like logs for the base, planks for the floor, and sticks for the walls. The roof needs stones, sticks, logs, and planks. Some buildings also need special items like bamboo, straw, or clay.

Here is a finished woodcutter’s hut:

This building is complete with extra furnishings (more on that in a moment) but it serves the basic purpose described above. Approach the stilted log and use E to access the workstation.

Quite a few choices, huh? There’s more under the planks tab.

Let’s discuss what’s here.

There are five types of trees currently in the game: conifer (needle-bearing), deciduous (leaf-bearing), with premium versions for both. Bamboo, which is not used in this building, is the fifth. You can see the difference when looking in your inventory by the small symbol next to the log icon. Any tree log can be used to make sticks, firewood and bark. But each tree type creates its own separate plank. Here is an example of premiun conifer and premium deciduous in both log and plank form:

These planks will bear the same identifier as the log and are not interchangeable or stackable. Why is this important? Because the walls of most buildings will require specific planks. When you use the “E” key to modify a wall, you’ll see 3 choices (right now). Conifer, Deciduous, and Premium Conifer. Premium Deciduous and Fruit appear in the building’s radials but the implementation of these two trees is incomplete. You can make Prem. Ded planks but you can’t use them except in certain cases and Fruit Trees haven’t been added yet. So, you can safely ignore those two. Once you modify a building, all the walls will require the same type of plank. You can’t mix and match in a single building. So, having the right plank is essential. Many building stages require plank (any). Here, it doesn’t matter which plank and you can mix and match. But walls are specific so remember that.

Play around with the woodcutter’s hut for a bit and get used to what it can do. Once you’re finished, let’s get started on Ako’s house. We’ll cover that in the next section along with all the options that come with the game for walls, decorations, and furniture.

Building, Furniture and Decoration

It’s time to get into the meat of the construction portion of the game. Since you need to give Ako a place to live, let’s build another house. Find an open area, place the foundation and deliver enough logs and planks to finish the foundation and floor. Now the blue outlines for the walls appear. With the exception of the entryway, all other walls have 2 options. E will allow you to modify the type of planks you wish to use.

Walls created with different planks have subtle differences in appearance but I’ve not found any real game play difference. At least not yet. The main reason you might choose something other than conifer is that you’re located in a place where conifer trees are not around. So, choose whatever plank you have access to.

Hitting F brings up a pretty extensive radial menu:

These are all stylistic choices that change the physical appearance of the wall. Each wall section can have its own style so you can mix and match. The only limitation is entrances, which are limited to a specific amount depending on the building. Small houses can only have 2. Here, a reinforced wall:

And the base wall (which includes solid walls and windowed walls)

(Yeah, I got photo-bombed by a villager here)

All wall styles have an identical stick requirement, 2 for solid, 3 for small window, 4 for large window. The plank cost for each style is variable and increases based on the complexity of the design. Now that you have a woodcutter and can make plenty of planks quickly, you can experiment as you build Ako’s house. Once all the walls are done, top it with a roof, toss in the hearth and bed, and you’ll have a ready made residence for your fellow piece of flotsam! But, before you head off to brag, the house looks pretty boring, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you rather it look more like this:

The furniture and decorations tabs in the building menu have many useful items. Furniture are big items you can interact with, like beds for sleeping and hearths for cooking.

To make more storage space, use your hammer to build a Tawara Bag. Open the build menu, select furniture, then house, and choose the Tawara Bag. Place it inside your finished house. You need 10 straw and 8 sticks to make it. Once it’s built, you can move items between your inventory and the bag.

Decorations are smaller items that are placed instantly if you have the materials. Try different items to see where they can be placed.

At the woodcutter’s hut, you need to add a Woodworking Station. Use the build menu, select furniture, then production, and choose the Woodworking Station. Place it inside the hut and finish it with your hammer. You’ll need this to make buckets later.

All production buildings need specific furniture to work properly. Some furniture is required, while others are optional but helpful.

Now you can get Ako. Go to the beach and talk to her. After the conversation, you’ll need to give her a house. Do this the same way you got your own house. Remember, Ako will need more help soon, so be prepared for new tasks.

Villager Needs and Storage

As you progress in the game, you will be able to invite more and more villagers to join you. Every villager has needs. You’ll start with the basics: food and water, but eventually, your main Dynasty tab will look like this:

But, how do you provide for the needs of your people? Storage. There are six storage buildings in the game as of this writing.

You can build food, water, general, and wood storage buildings right away. The armory unlocks at Dynasty level 14, and the Ice Storage isn’t available yet. You need to build at least one of each type of storage in your village. All storages are shared, so you can access them from any storage furniture, even across different villages.

Ako needs food and water, so use your hammer and axe to build food storage, wood storage, water storage, and general storage buildings. Don’t forget to add the required furniture inside each building. This will take a while and require a lot of trees and stones.

After building the storages, you need to fill them. Check the Dynasty screen to see your people’s needs. At the bottom, there’s a slider between two faces. The orange face shows the minimum supply, which won’t make people happy. The green face shows full supply, which increases happiness. Try to keep supplies in the green zone.

Note: The game currently resets the slider to minimum each time you load it. You may want to adjust it only when you’re ready to end the season.

It’s important to finish these storages before spring ends. They also help keep your personal inventory clear.

The Shed is a useful building that can hold one of each type of storage furniture. This lets you access all storages in one place. You can move the Shed and other buildings by using the hammer on their base. This means you don’t need to worry too much about where you place buildings at first – you can move them later when you decide on a better layout.

With your storages complete, you can now think about the needs themselves. How do you fulfill them? You add items to the storage. First, open up your inventory. You’ve probably got a food item or two. Click on one to see this:

The info panel for anything in your inventory can tell you what type of storage is required (some items seem a little odd, like charcoal in wood storage) and what, if any, needs it provides. Here, the Simple Fish Dish I got from talking to grouchy tells me that it belongs in Food Storage (duh!) and that it provides “Villager Needs (Meals): 45”. Below that is the amount of money I can receive for selling the item to a vendor. If you add this item to your food storage, you’ll see the meals need number increase by 45. The + or – after this number indicates your seasonal change. You’ll want this second number as close to zero or in the green to avoid having to do a lot of work yourself in food collection and storage. For now, each villager needs a minimum 75 meal points per season (orange face, unhappy) and a maximum of 125 (green face, happy bonus). This is true of water as well. Other needs will surface as you add more villagers. Heating becomes an issue at 3 population (including yourself although you don’t consume storage items). Maintenance appears at 7 population. Heating is provided most efficiently with firewood while maintenance is provided for with stone, either raw or chiseled for best efficiency.

You want the ending balance of each need of your village to be above zero after seasonal change so plan accordingly and cover any gaps in NPC production before the season change.

With that covered, you can open the quest tab in your information (hotkey “K,” remember?) and choose one of the three quests Toshichi gave you. Unfortunately, the “F” key command to track quests doesn’t work right now so just click on that message to change your tracking to the quest you want. I’ll cover the quests next.

The Big Three (Questing)

Okay, Ako is settled in, you’ve got some storage to fulfill her needs and a basic understanding of how those needs work. I guess we can get to those things Toshichi demand… err asked us to do. Let’s start with “The Impure.”

This quest is pretty quick and simple and introduces you to the fetch system. It also delivers your first moral dilemma choice.

Head to the west of Sosogi a short ways to find the still-standing house of Hikobei, a resident of Sosogi who refused to leave. He’s now old, sick and in need of some help. Get the story from his minder, the Impure named Matsumaru.

Exhaust your dialogue options with Matsumaru to get the whole story. He’ll then tell you to speak with Mata. Mata is on the eastern edge of the flat area of Sosogi. She’ll usually be around her little tent.

Talk to her and tell her you want to help Hikobei. She presents you with a choice. Your decision on this will affect the opinion of people in Nata Valley as word of your deeds spread. You can choose to help Hikobei live despite the pain or honor his wishes and deliver a painless death.

Choose whichever you like but keep in mind the culture being depicted in the game. The logical choice that will net you the best reaction is to honor Hikobei’s wishes and help him die. For this walkthrough, that’s the choice we’ll take. Mata will ask you to deliver some plants. In this case, 10 Yellow Chrysanthemums. There are several patches of these flowers on the ground near Sosogi.

They look like this:

Pick 10 of them then return to Mata. She’ll whip up an anesthetic for Hikobei. Deliver it to the old man:

He thanks you. Talk to Matsumaru again to finish up the quest. Once you do, the next quest “Tranquil Tribute” will auto-activate.

“Tranquil Tribute” is a short quest that introduces travel outside Sosogi as well as the spiritual implements of Sengoku Dynasty.

Follow the road east from Sosogi to find Chiyome. Along the way, you’ll pas this area:

On top of the little stone wall, you’ll find a crow’s nest that looks like this:

Grab an egg to save some time. Then continue on to the quest marker to find Chiyome in or around her house. Talk to her and find out the shrine needs some love. Finish out her dialogue then walk a few steps away and slap down a campfire. Cook the egg you grabbed to update the quest then follow the marker east along the road. The shrine is on an elevated area so you’ll need to go around to find a way up. Eventually, you’ll find a rather pretty area that is a shrine to Inari.

Open the shrine and watch the short scene. Then interact with the shrine to leave the cooked egg. You might need to move the camera to find where to interact. This will give you the blessing of Inari, which you can see in the “Monk” section of your Legend screen.

Before going back to Chiyome, check the area north of the shrine. Sometimes, a food trader appears there. If you see one, gather some items to sell and try to buy 3 uncooked meat if available. This will help with an upcoming quest.

Return to Chiyome to finish the quest. While at her house, go inside and check two items you can search. One will have food you can take. If there’s meat, that’s great. If not, take all the food for your food storage. The other item might have medicine or drinks. Take these for your general storage or water storage.

And now, the pain in the backside quest. Hunting. At least it was for me. Your mileage may vary. Let’s start “Territorial Defense”!

This quest will introduce you to the basics of hunting, i.e., poking things with a spear. Follow your quest marker pretty far to the east of Sosogi to find the hunting camp of Kengyo, a guy with a temperament that makes our grouchy fishermen seem nice.

Talk to him to find out his apprentice is slacking off. Head off to the north to find Kikumatsu wandering aimlessly. Talk to him to find out he’s a tree-hugging member of PETA (not the good “People Eating Tasty Animals” PETA, either). But he’s out to prove his manhood anyway and asks you to go kill the nice little bunnies for him. Typical, right? Okay, so, first, you need something to hunt with. Follow the quest and make a wooden yari and a stone knife if you don’t have them yet. The quest updates and now the fun begins.

For this portion, I recommend turning your foliage setting to Low even if you’re using a HAL supercomputer. The foliage is lush and the animals are small so they can hide really well. Turning this setting to low eliminates most of the foliage, giving you better vision.

Find a rabbit by wandering around and looking for the little brown critter running away from you. Now, you can throw your spear at it but you’ll likely miss. Hitting a moving rabbit with a thrown spear in this game is like hitting a salmon with a surface-to-air missile. Sure, you might hit one in a million times (I can hear Lloyd Christmas now… so you’re telling me there’s a chance!) but it’s really not a viable option for those of us with a lack of skill. Fortunately, there’s a better option. You actually sprint faster than both rabbits and foxes. Deer will leave you in the dust. Boars are dangerous options you should avoid. So, hold down shift and chase those little buggers down.

He got away but this guy didn’t:

You need to equip the knife to get the meat so do that now. You need three total so if you don’t get 3 from your first kill, go find another animal to mercilessly slaughter… err hunt.

Now that you have your meat you need to cook it so, yep, you guessed it, a campfire! You could run back to the village and use the hearth but why?!? Cook 3 meat and talk to Kikumatsu. Another dilemma choice! For this walkthrough, don’t tell him to eat the meat. Tell him he’s strong instead. Done with him, return to Kengyo. He might be hiding up in the hunting hut’s tower

So go to him. Finish up and get 3 new blueprints. You also get orders to talk to Toshichi.

Special Projects and Finishing Up

Whew. It’s been a long day. Toshichi is waiting but it’s dark and I’m tired.

I’m going to bed. If you don’t like working in the dark, I suggest you do the same.

Ahh, much better. And there, the sun is rising! Time to get to work. We’ve got one last thing to do here in Sosogi so let’s talk to Toshichi and find out what it is.

Exhaust his dialogue and he’ll tell you Sayuri wants the bridge leading out of town rebuilt. She’s also looking for some new digs. You’ve seen Sayuri wandering about. She probably even got in your way a time or two. So, let’s find her and add her to the village. Oh, wait. She’ll need a house, won’t she. sigh Okay, build a house. Done? Good. Now let’s go find her.

Exhaust her dialogue. She will unlock the special project construction site blueprint for you. Assign her a house then head east to the bridge construction site you passed on the way to Kengyo. Access the build menu and select the special project construction site.

You must place this project close to the sign that accompanies any special project you wish to complete. If you get a red error message telling you you’re too far away… MOVE CLOSER!!! Sometimes you need to clear out some items like stone deposits that like to hide inside shrubbery. Get a green outline and place it.

Add materials until complete.

Now, special projects need more than just building materials for the site. You must now supply the materials your worker will use during the off-season to complete it. In this case, you need 20 logs and 40 planks.

Sounds like a lot, right? Considering some of the special projects out there, this is cheap. Deliver the mats until finished and you see this:

Now, all you have to do is assign a worker. It’s Sayuri’s project so let’s assign her. Open the Dynasty tab and go to Jobs.

Select the bridge construction project and click on assign worker. This lists all NPCs whether they already have a job or not. Hopefully this gets fixed in the future to show only unemployed people. For now, you’ve only got three people so the list is short. Choose Sayuri (or whoever you want).

The small bridge will take one season to build. Other projects take longer:

• Watchtowers: 4 seasons
• Ore processing stations: 5 seasons (can be built but not working yet)
• Big bridge in the south: 6 seasons

While waiting, gather mushrooms and gobo. Cook the gobo to make it more filling, then store everything in the food storage. Make sure you have enough to keep Ako and Sayuri well-fed.

For water, build a well. You’ll also need buckets. To make buckets:

• Place a woodworker’s station inside the woodcutter’s hut.
• Use the station to craft buckets. Each bucket needs 2 planks.
• Make 10 buckets.

Go to the well and use the buckets. Each bucket gives 5 water but is used up. With 10 buckets, you’ll get 50 water. Put this water in the water storage.

Head to the bell tower and you’ll might see this.

If so, you’ll have to occupy some time until you see this:

Sleep, gather, chop wood and fill your wood storage up if you have time to spare then use the bell tower to change the season. Double check your needs providence. Make sure it is in the green. Then click twice on change season. You’ll see a cut scene showing the bridge completion. And, voila (again!), you’ve finished the bridge!

Guess what? You’ve got to talk to Toshichi. But this is the last time. I promise.

The End of The Beginning

You’ve made good progress so far. Now, go talk to Toshichi. Listen to everything he has to say. You’ll get new clothes to wear and a new quest.

This marks the end of the beginning, and you should feel proud of what you’ve achieved. The new quest will take you further into Nata Valley and show you more of what the world has to offer.

While this guide is ending, your journey is just starting. There’s still a lot more to do and discover in the game.

There’s a lot of stuff out there to find. And if you want to make your village into something special

You’ve really got to get to work.

Useful Tips & Info

Buckets, Water and You

Okay, so, the bucket/well/water system seems a bit counter-intuitive so i’m adding this addendum to help clear things up. Crafting buckets first requires you to build a woodcutter’s hut and placing the furniture item Woodworker’s Table:

Once it is placed, you interact with it to open the crafting radial:

Buckets cost two planks of any type each. You can queue up as many as you have planks for but in this case, we’re going to make 10 so make sure you have 20 planks. Once you have the planks, approach the well and interact with it:

You can deliver up to 10 total buckets at a time:

These will slowly fill until all the buckets are consumed. Each bucket dropped will return 5 bamboo bottles filled with water. Tap F to collect 5

Or hold F to collect all water available. These bottles will be added to your inventory and stack up to 50 per inventory slot.

Head over to your water storage and transfer them over and voila (yes, again!), you have stored water for your villagers to drink!

Why Build Beggar Huts in My Village?

Here are the benefits to making a city of beggars or fill your village with them strategically of course so that you wont need to run everywhere to find them:

• Lots of beggars to “scam” coins by selling them stuffs
• Beggars sell various resource and some which you cannot gather or make by yourself
• Makes your village more lively
• It doesn’t add to your build or village limit

Note: Beggar huts are accessible on the building menu at:

• Village Structure > Trade Village Structure > Beggar’s Hut > Choose between 3 types.

How to Add a Lamp to a Lamp Stand

First you have to build your lamp Stand. You find it in your building menu under Village Structures, and there in Village Light Structures. You’ll need 2 – 4 planks for it.

The oil lamps can be crafted in hunter’s hut or woodcutter hut and paper lamps you need to buy from some vendor or find in loot (you may have to look for them a bit because vendor inventories are random).

To hang up the lamp on the stand:

• Put the lamp into your inventory.
• Take your hammer in your hand.
• Open the building menu and go to Decorations and there to Light sources.
• Find the lamp you got, left click on it and you’ll see a violet cube on your lamp post (see image).
• You have to move the lamp until you see a bright green shape of your chosen lamp inside the violet cube.
• Then you can place it with left click.

How to Find the Correct “Sunken Hearth” with a Cooking Pot

Here is your problem:

• You have to build the simple “Sunken Hearth” when you build any sort of hut.
• Having 10 huts and placing an additional with cooking pot is giving you a headache searching for it.

Here is the solution:

• Get yourself a hammer and all material you need to create a “Sunken Hearth” with cooking pot.
• Now equip the hammer and go to your first hut.
• Aim at the unwanted “Sunken Hearth”.
• No you can not destroy it, BUT you are allowed to CHANGE it.
• If you have all material at hand, you can simply change it into the upgraded version.

So just add a cooking pot to every fire you are forced to build and you have full access for every NPC without searching forever.

Village Vendors

A table showing the main vendors locations in the game and what they sell/specialize in. Note that you will meet more vendors and beggars in your travels around the map that are random spawns and that usually have a very simple inventory. Also note that all vendors inventories are randomly generated and refresh on season change so visit frequently if you are looking for something specific.

And do not forget that you can build beggars huts in your villages to trade with them for easy money.

Crops Planting Schedule

This table shows when to plant the different crops available in the game. This information is also available in game when you select a seed bag in an inventory and read it’s description.

Note that if you do not harvest your crops before winter, they will wither and die.

All of the farming tools needed and the seed bags can be either bought from vendors in Aratani or crafted by the player.