The Wandering Village is a new city simulation game where players are tasked to build a living and thriving settlement atop a giant, walking creature. Much like several city-building games before it, the Wandering Village also has its myriad of systems where players can get lost to trying to manage.
Although they aren’t overly-complicated per se, beginners to the genre may find it intimidating and drop the game itself because of it. Worry no more! We are here to help you. Here is an Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to The Wandering Village.
Ultimate Beginner Guide in The Wandering Village
First thing’s first, you would want to start a new game that fits your current gaming skill. Do not be afraid to choose the lowest difficulty setting just because. It is recommended for first-time players for a reason.
You may also adjust several advanced difficulty options, such as if you want your villagers not to die. Turn them on if you want.
Once you’re in the game, here you’d find the Elder’s Notebook in the top-right corner of your screen. Here, you can read all about the game’s mechanics, controls, and even the game’s backstories.
Basically, you can find everything here that you wish to learn in the game. Go back to the Elder’s Notebook whenever you feel lost or confused about something in-game.
Once you are done reading, its now time to provide your small sample of villagers shelter. This comes in form of Tents, which you can find by exploring the central menu you have at the bottom-center of your screen.
While you may place Tents anywhere you wish in the back of your giant creature, Onbu, it is best that you place them around several resources that you can gather, such as trees. It will give you the best possible starting condition.
Take not that the simple Tent can only house 2 villagers at a time. After placing them, you should see that it requires 5 Wood to finish. You may also re-place Tents you may have placed wrongly by clicking on the several options you have when you highlight it.
To harvest resources, trees for this instance, simply click on the harvest tool in your central menu then drag-and-drop on the area you wish to harvest. You may also click resources individually if that’s what you want.
Begin harvesting the resources near you.
Now, you may also build dirt roads to give your village some road map structure. Unlike the Tents we just built awhile ago, dirt roads does not have any required materials to finish, it just needs people working on it. After a bit of time, they should finish themselves.
Villagers also walk faster when there are roads, so its advisable to connect most of your village with it.
Just like any other city-building games, food is also a crucial aspect in The Wandering Village. To provide your villagers with the food they need, you must build structures that would serve that purpose. For now, we will settle for the Berry Gatherer.
After choosing the structure you want to place, it will then give you the chance to place it wherever you wish. To make the most of it, you would want to place it on an area with the highest efficiency.
For this instance, look for a place where there are several shrubs clumped together.
Another way to get food early game is got to be with Farm buildings. After selecting the Farm building, you should see white dots surrounding it in a circle. This represents the workable area on your farm once it’s built.
Ideally you’d want to look for a place where there are more white dots.
Next are Air Wells, this provides your villagers with the water they need. To place Air Wells in your village, simply choose it from the central menu and place it near your Tents.
Now that you have an Air Well, its also a good idea to give your villagers the space to store water. To do just that, proceed to the storage section in the central menu and choose water Tank. Place it beside your Air Well.
By this moment, your Berry Gatherer and Farm structures should be finished. Select the Farm you placed awhile ago then click on Add Plot.
Highlight the areas where you wish your villagers plot crops. Ideally, you’d highlight all the white dots we prepared for it to maximize efficiency.
Another building you should place early on is the Research Building. Place it near your Tents.
Once the Research Building is done, you’d immediately be given a choice for your first research.
Before choosing, you may want to click first Open Research Tree to get an idea of what researches you can get after choosing one.
Remember, that happiness in this game is significantly impacted by the food they have and the shelter they have access to. That being said, it is highly recommended that you choose the Kitchen research first.
Once you are done with the Research Building and the scientists in it are now operating, you may want to build the Worker Post next.
You would want to place the Worker Post in between your Tents and your production buildings, such as the Farm. This is because it gives villagers a movement speed boost, making movement around your village more efficient and generally faster.
For the early game, keep the Worker Post’s focus on General Workers. But you may adjust it to other options further into the game.
Next thing to consider is building Refined Resources buildings. The reason being is because these produce materials that are needed on the construction of higher-level buildings.
Another building that is crucial in the early game is the Herbalist. It provides your villagers with the herbs needed to keep themselves healthy.
Like the Farm building, you should also see a work area around it when placing it. Much like before, you may want to place it where you can get most of the white dots. Once the building is done, select the land to operate with by highlighting the available dots.
Another thing to keep your mind on when playing The Wandering Village is that Onbu, itself, also needs food.
If neglected, it can starve to death and die, ending your village and the game with it.
To make sure that Onbu is fed, you would want to go back to your Research menu and to the Hornblower research under the Onbu section then on the Onbu Kitchen and the Onbu Feeding Trebuchet.
It is best that you do this early in the game.
After that, you’d then need to build a Mycologist building. This is where your people would prepare food for Onbu. Unlike the previous buildings we situated awhile ago, the Mycologist wants you to build on dirt areas.
The Mycologist also has its area to operate represented by white dots. Make the most of it as well.
After the building is done, start plotting the area by highlighting the white dots, just like the Farm from before.
On the top right corner of your screen should be Onbu’s current stats. This includes its hunger. Always be wary of it.
We certainly recommend that it does not go any higher than 25% before starting all these as a several things should first be done before you can start feeding Onbu.
It may take quite a while but after getting access to the Onbu Kitchen building, immediately place it near the Mycologist.
This will store the mushrooms taken from your plotted lands to feed to Onbu.
Say that the Onbu Feeding Trebuchet is done as well. Select it and you should notice that there are only a few places where you can place it.
Particularly, near the head of Onbu, place it somewhere near your village.
After the building is done, select interactions. This should zoom out the camera to where you can see Onbu fully.
On the bottom right of your screen, you should see an option where you can choose what to feed Onbu. Simply click it to feed Onbu the food your village has prepared for it with the buildings we just took care of.
There should be a certain animation that symbolizes you feeding Onbu. Each food you feed reduces its hunger by 20%. We cannot stress this enough, prioritize building these as Onbu is a game-ending condition.
Now that you can feed Onbu and keep its health high, you may turn your focus once again to your villagers.
Next thing to consider is to get the Decontaminator research done. This is to ensure that your villagers won’t be sick by consuming poison plants.
To see if your villagers and the plants near them are at risk of poisoning, you may want to pay attention to the small notice at the corner right of the screen just beside Onbu’s stats. This will tell you if what your villagers are breathing is fresh air or toxic.
Once you can construct Decontaminators, place it on the central area of Onbu’s back. This is so that you can also decontaminate the other trees that may still be a bit far away from your village.
Now, you may want to construct a Pantry to store food for your villagers. On the storage section of your central menu, just choose Pantry and place it in between your Tents and the food production buildings you have built.
You may also want to consider building a Materials Storage after. This, as its name suggests, stores materials needed when constructing buildings. You may also want to place it at the center of your village.
With all that done, you may want to add a few more Tents for you villagers to settle on. Check their happiness meter and do things that would improve it, such as providing other food varieties and more houses.
Next is the Village Doctor building. This is the Hospital equivalent in The Wandering Village to other city-building games. This is where your villagers are treated when they become sick.
After that, is the Scavenger Hut. When placing them, you should see that you only have a limited place to where you can settle them down, particularly by the edge of Onbu.
This is because the Scavenger Hut is what you use to gather resources away from your village and Onbu itself.
Sometimes, you’d see certain events where you will be given a choice on a particular situation. These events can be seen just below Onbu’s stats on the top right corner of the screen.
In the early game, you may want to choose the option where your population may grow.
Next thing to consider building is the Dung Collector. This provides materials used on the Decontaminators by converting Onbu’s wastes to useful material.
As you may have already guessed, the Dung Collector can only be placed at the behind part of Onbu.
By this point, your village should be self-sufficient for the moment and should be thriving – albeit slowly. As fun as it may be to grow fast, you don’t really need to rush things. Doing so would only put your village on a tight spot to which you may find challenging to recover from.
Take your time managing your resources and keeping in check your people’s happiness and Onbu’s stats. Therefore, its best to build the foundations early on in the game, just like what we did.
This gives you the best possible scenarios to have a beautiful and rapidly growing village later on.
Enjoy building your fantasy village on the back of a walking giant creature! We hope this guide helps you.
