Start Small in Life Is Feudal: Forest Village
Life Is Feudal: Forest Village is one tough game if you’re just jumping in and don’t have much experience with this genre. The winter will be really harsh on your village, so it’s imperative that you prepare for that every year. As such, when you first start out, it’s important that you start small. Don’t go building house after house. At most, replace the three shacks you start with, with houses. This will provide better living and better birth rates for your people. Once you’ve built three houses, though, you should stop for awhile. This will yield you a maximum of 15 villagers, and once all of those babies and teens have grown up, then it might be time to expand. But your buildings will only work so long as you have villagers to hire in those jobs, and you’re extremely limited to start. Yes, this may seem sucky, but you really don’t need much to survive at first, either. So keeping your village small is the best way to make sure you can manage it as you go.
Don’t Forget Firewood
Something that will hit you hard come winter is the lack of heating. In Life Is Feudal: Forest Village, you will need to provide a means for your families to heat up inside their homes. If they’re homeless, they’re screwed. But they’re also screwed if they don’t have any firewood for the stove fuel. This is crafted at a Lumberjack’s Lodge, and it’s imperative this be one of the first buildings you make and hire for. Have at least one lumberjack and one forester (at a Forester’s Lodge) and you will have a constant stream of firewood coming in. For each log, three firewood pieces are produced. It’s important to note that if you are currently building up stuff that uses a lot of wood, your builders will prioritize this and thus use up all the logs. Your poor lumberjack needs the resource to work with, too!
Food, Food, Food
Keeping up with prior advice to stock up before winter comes, you’re going to need to get a lot of food ready. Basically the only two sources of food you will be able to get through the winter are from coops, hunters, or fishermen. The summer is the time to stock up on all of the fruits and vegetables from orchards, fields, and gatherers. It’s very smart, therefore, to have at least one worker in each of these buildings. So, yes, you need to build the food buildings quickly. For the first year, I like to start with one Fisherman’s Lodge, one Hunting Cabin, and one Gatherer’s Hut. Every free laborer gets distributed among these, and you’ll find your stockpile will be full enough to survive the winter in no time. Of course, as more laborers become available to you, and your village grows, it’s smart to also expand into the fields, orchards, and coops.
Here’s How to Collect Resources
While there are plenty of resource collection buildings that you’ll be able to build eventually, these require a ton of resources themselves and will take up your laborers’ times. To start, you need to collect this stuff yourself. Hit the “Collect All Resources” button on the bottom right of your screen, and then go through selecting each type of resource. For each one, drag your mouse across the screen to highlight all the resources and mark them. Your laborers and builders will go through collecting these all, so make sure you have plenty of those to pick these up. This is how you will stockpile logs, hay, stone, and ores at first in the game. It then becomes automatic as you build the resource collection buildings, but as previously stated, this won’t be for awhile.
Remember to Fire and Hire
Your villagers won’t stay at the same job all of the time in Life Is Feudal: Forest Village. During the winter months, there will be no point in keeping a farmer working, for example. Their time will be better used in another position that isn’t obsolete during winter. The same goes for any other position. If you really need a hand somewhere else, you need to move the worker over there. Another example being if you suddenly really need 200 hay and don’t have any laborers. Sacrifice a couple of positions to get them gathering the resource so that you can finish that important building. They can survive without food production for a bit, right?
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