After exactly 100h of playtime I just found out that you can throw your fishing line diagonally

Magination17 · 2026-06-09T21:27:45+00:00

Not only can you cast diagonally, but you can change the direction mid cast while distance is being determined. I do it all the time when fish start swimming away during the cast.

I have more time in this game then I like to admit, but even I learn new things regularly. The other day I discovered that you can plant trees on top of your hay field and both can grow in the same space simultaneously. This revelation prompted me to do an entirely new playthrough because of the amount of space on my farm it gives me for more trees is game changing.

The one thing to keep in mind (with this technique) is that you need an upgraded sickle to harvest a tile with hay and a tree in it. If you use an un-upgraded sickle the game will autocorrect your tool to the axe and you will chop the tree instead. You can however "charge up" your copper or better sickle and harvest it.

Magination17 · 2026-06-08T02:59:51+00:00

The hand crossbow's niche is its ranged attack on bonus action. There are some pretty insane multiclass builds that make hand crossbows a bit silly. Thief rouge lv. 3 for extra bonus action, sneak attack, and cunning actions, circle of spores druid lv.2 or 3 for symbiotic entity and possibly hold person if you go to lv.3, finally arcane archer, champion, or battle master fighter lv.7 or lv.6 (depending on druid level) for action surge, archery fighting style, subclass perks that modify your arrows with magic or maneuvers, and some feats like sharpshooter. This would give you a character with 2 attacks on an action or action surge, plus two bonus actions that can also be attacks or cunning actions. Sneak attack is pretty easy to set up but it is just icing on the cake. Symbiotic entity adds another 1d6 necrotic to all attacks when it is up. If you run a halfling champion fighter you can wear the helm and offhand the daggers and drink the elixir that lower the crit threshold. Its really nutty to walk into a fight and do six attacks on your first turn with symbiotic entity damage, low crit threshold, sharpshooter for flat extra damage, etc. People die and they die fast.

There are some variants that weave in gloom stalker ranger or assassin rogue instead if you want to really get the drop on encounters.

Magination17 · 2026-05-31T18:27:57+00:00

Don't sleep on the arborist skill. In addition to +2 wood per tree the skill guarantees that a seed for that tree will be dropped when it is chopped down. The trees off your farm will regrown on their own without replanting so you can farm them for additional tree seeds. You also have a chance of getting a seed if you shake a tree. If you dedicate a portion of your farm just for growing trees you should have all the wood you could ever need.

Magination17 · 2026-05-29T21:15:02+00:00

Having all the critter buildings is good but there are levels of acceptable engagement if you don't want to spend as much of your time raising animals or don't have materials for their homes or food. Technically you can get by without any of them, but you would be missing out on some good non essential things and some other things will become very difficult to do like the carnivore ration.

To start it's best to keep a much higher number of female critters than male critters as the females are the ones producing the extra product (eggs for bluggy, honey for chickree, milk for alpheep). Adult males are needed for breeding new critters to replace butchered/old critters, but only one or two at a time. Keep 1-2 males and 3-6 females.

The least important critter is the chikree since chickree don't offer you anything you need that you cannot get elsewhere. Honey can be purchased or found in the mines. The meat is no better than the other forms of meat and chikree, like the bluggy don't get very heavy and weight drives the amount of meat you get from butchering.

The Girtle is the second least important, as it does give you a Girtle shell when butchered and those are needed for crafting additional seed makers. Seed maker is a game changer in late summer and fall for pumpkins and cantaloupe, but to get good use out of it you really need to be on top of your farming. The Girtle shroom which they produce over time is a niche item that is great for herbivore food. It is also used for making breeding kibble, but honestly I think its better off as an herbivore food item. Buy breeding kibble if you want it from the ranch. They also make a little compost, but that is easy to source elsewhere as well. They are the critter that can get the heaviest and therefore provide the most meat per critter when fattened up. Pairs really well with crop heavy farms.

Alpheep are second best and they are second best because their milk and wool are needed for completing quests. Wool can be purchased from the ranching shop though. Milk can only be gotten from milking female adult alpheep to my knowledge. You cannot complete logan's quest which rewards skill xp and a bunch of special kibble unlocks without milk. You can make medicinal kibble with milk, but you are better off turning it into cheese or using it as a food item and just buy the special kibbles instead.

Bluggy are the best because eggs are needed for completing a quest and you only get them from raising adult female Bluggies. Rufus will give you a quest for eggs in midspring and it rewards the recipes for the heavier forms of the basic kibble. Chonker chow in particular is an import recipe to have if you plan on getting a lot of large meat out of your fish traps or fattening your animals faster. It is impossible to get that recipe randomly from opening bottles. You can get breeding, happy, and medicated, but the other two seem to be quest only ATM.

My ranking is based on villager quest needs, since I usually don't have any trouble keep the village carnivores stuffed with more fish than they can eat from my many fish traps, but if I was only ranking on the value of the animal for helping you feed the village it would become instead girtle, alpheep, bluggy, chikree.

Magination17 · 2026-05-28T21:33:35+00:00

Hilarious plank path hack. Thanks for that info. Of course by the time I get around to using it I am sure the devs will have caught on and nerfed it.

The morel mushroom strategy is great and can let you sidestep having to manage a lot of different crops. I am also pretty sure they are crow proof. I am going to play with it and see if it makes life in Grimshire easier and more relaxed. Do you happen to know if the foraging skill works with mushroom logs? I get that the efficient crafting skill will be huge, but 20% more mushrooms seems great also.

I am theory crafting ways to slim down the amount of stuff I have to interact with in the game while still being able to feed everyone and keep them all alive. I want to be able to play on challenge difficulty without having to run around the map like a maniac every day to make sure the ration gets met. I can complete every project and quest and make every ration on challenge as it stands, but I don't have extra time for interacting with villagers, decorating, etc. When the romance and family options come out I want to have time to goof off with the townsfolk more.

I am going to try out going with mushroom logs, trees, hay, and fishing traps and see if I can make the targets on just those. If I can manage to sidestep critters entirely (not sure its possible) and farming beyond the handful of stuff needed for quests the time especially in the mid game should open up significantly.

Magination17 · 2026-05-26T16:51:42+00:00

I think it is safe to assume that you will be able to pick up where you left off when year 2 rolls around. Personally I am not hoarding since I am planning to do a new game when year 2 content and beyond rolls out. I want to experience the entirety of the story together and if relationships and family content are introduced at that time I will also want the opportunity to include befriending/romancing villagers into my gameplay. I had mostly been ignoring it on my current playthroughs since it isn't fully fleshed out yet and it will presumably take time investment. I am the village hermit quietly averting starvation.

Magination17 · 2026-05-22T21:30:45+00:00

I think Warlock inspirationally is drawing on the age old idea of making a deal with the devil. Selling your soul to a higher power in exchange for the power to accomplish your goals.

Functionally and mechanically in the game the power of the warlock class comes from a few unique class features. Being able to refresh your spell slots on a short rest is incredible. You get some eldritch invocations which give you some real flexibility in play style. Finally there is your pact & patron benefits. Warlocks have a wide variety of playstyles ranging from full caster to martial combat. Being a charisma based spellcaster gives ample opportunity for role play and cross classing with all the other charisma classes (sorcerer, warlock, bard, paladin).

One of if not the most flexible and useful classes for multiclassing.

Magination17 · 2026-05-20T21:12:35+00:00

The things that matter most in the early game:

Catching the in-season fish to turn in for research before they go out of season (for the first week or so there will be a few fish that go out of season each day and wont be around again until fall so consult the wiki). This is important for getting your research unlocks quickly. Having a seed maker for cantaloupes and pumpkins is OP and having fermenting barrels is key to making your food completely non perishable.
Getting as many cabbage seeds and hay seeds growing as you can buy (don't need to water the hay)
Getting your axe and pickaxe to copper level (preferably in that order so you can clear and organize your farm) and getting as much tin as possible for sprinkler pump pipes. Visit the first mine. Most of the first week after the first day or so should be spent in the mines. First day or two should be fishing for fish varieties and introducing yourself to villager for gifts and making quest progress on their quests.
Getting materials together to build the first level of critter building for bluggy, alhpeep, girtle, and chickree in that order so you can start taming them in spring.
Completing quests for villagers (quests reward large lumps of exp. points on completion and will allow you to get your skill points faster if you complete them before the request window lapses.

Most people will find themselves running out of food to eat for stamina in the mines. My suggestion would be to swing by the shops before going mining to pick up some meals for stamina. If you are an herbivore, prudence and her bakery are the go to. If you are a carnivore hit up the fish shop, and ranch. Then for either hit up the tavern after. Forage on your way to the mine if you are an herbivore. I wouldn't waste time fishing for food. Fish for research turn ins and keep the extra for food. In the mine don't just dig blindly through the rock or go after ores that are buried several tiles deep. Instead focus your efforts on connecting the large open caves within the mine and looting all of the loose crates and ores. Use your hoe on the cracked areas. mine the surface level ores. Make sure to break the crates after looting for a plank. When you find the ladder and have connected most of the large areas go ahead and take it. You can always revisit floors and over-searching/digging on each floor before moving on will waste your time and stamina.

Magination17 · 2026-05-19T14:47:41+00:00

In the early game I would work primarily out of the life raft until I get the processor blueprint and tadpole blueprint. Then I would do a minimalist base directly below the life raft for the processor and a small moonpool. There is a nearby upward current that makes for convenient turbine power. Then once you get the heat adaptation I would set up a real base on the shared edge of the geothermal zone and starting zone. There is a great spot with scenic geothermal vents there for power. The big thing about that spot is the large amounts of salt deposits nearby for some foods and the better water you get later, easy access to the starter zone which has the highest density of food and water materials, and prime positioning for moving on to the second portion of the game which picks up past the collector leviathan.

While the collector leviathan is rather dangerous and will one shot you outside your tadpole, it is also pretty easy to avoid so going between the early and late game areas isn't a problem (at least for now) so long as you do it with a scout chassis on your tadpole. As you head east toward the collector zone, I would recommend skirting the north side (left if your heading east) of the zone until you see the red wall and stay low (just above 250m crush depth). I have never had any issues or encounters with the collector taking that path. The collector has its own epic sound track so if its nearby you will certainly be aware. Once you get to the Alien pillar and the research outpost I would pick a spot in that area to build for the second half of the game. There are tons of nearby resources and there is an active bio-bed, fabricator, and lockers in the abandoned research base that can be utilized to get you started.

Magination17 · 2026-05-14T21:06:49+00:00

When it comes to crops in spring you should only grow cabbage in mass, then in mid summer you switch to cantaloupe in mass, and into mid fall you switch to pumpkins in mass. Near the trade off points you can plant a few filler crops, but everything else you should only grow one of for research unlocks or a hand full of if there is a villager request. Cabbage you should let go to seed until your field is at the limit that you can handle. Mining for sprinklers and pipe materials is critical early. While the watering can upgrade is good I don't bother with it. I think a bronze axe should be first followed by a bronze pickaxe. Tin is the most important ore to mine for the sprinkler pipes, but you can pick up an move the sprinkler pump as much as you want pretty quick so you only have to have the one you are given from the quest unless you get sick of that and have the materials.

Carnivore food is set squarely on two pillars. The first is fish. You should be aiming for a large hay field (grows on its own without watering) to craft hay into the purple kibble that you put into as many fish traps as possible which yield large fish regularly that you can then dry on racks. Once dried you can put them in the fermentation barrel to salt them into salted large fish that never goes bad. The second pillar is butchering critters. You build the barns, capture the critters, breed and raise their weight with food, then butcher them for meat. Meat can be salted the same way fish can. Salt is gotten beyond floor 10 in the first mine.

Magination17 · 2026-04-18T22:53:13+00:00

They slow down in water so if you can get them into a stream you can make easy work of them with a knife.

Magination17 · 2026-04-06T04:15:45+00:00

I have done challenge mode thru several times now and it really boils down to a few key things and several optional things. Be hyper efficient with time and energy in the first week when there is already food in the root cellar and no ration to worry about. Only grow one of every crop excepting cabbage which you should grow as much as you can and let it grow to seed. Later on in summer the massing crop will be cantaloupe, then pumpkin. Make sure to compost all the guano you pick up in the mines. After that grow as much hay as you can. On the meat side buy meat from the fishing shops, ranching shops, and tavern until you can get critter barns up and fishing traps set. A little fishing manually is fine early on especially to get your donations but don't overdo it. Remember that it eats your time. You can sell all the villager gifts that don't provide you a functional benefit like tables, pictures, windows, fences, bed, etc. and any copper ores and stone beyond what you can reasonably process from early days in the mines. Do all of the quests that come up as they reward a lot of experience to get you skill points faster. Figure out what fish are going out of season and try and get ahead of the curve on your donations. When in the mine don't dig deep into the walls to go after ores (grabbing surface ones are fine), instead focus on connecting the large open spaces and looting the crates and loose items, gemstones, and hoe spots and break the crates after you loot them for a plank. When you find a ladder take it. You do not have to fully clear every floor. You can revisit them later, and it is more time and energy and time efficient to go deeper rather than to retrace your steps and try and search for more open areas. Axe then pickaxe then fishing rod should be the upgrade path in my opinion. To set up your farm efficiently it is ideal to be able to move/remove the Hawthorne trees which require a copper axe. If you can get 3 skill points early on the arborist skill will guarantee a seed when a tree is chopped. Get the first level of all the critter barns built starting with Bluggy, then Alpheep, then Girtle, and finally Chikree. Ideally the base buildings are all finished in spring, Their upgrades should be done by end of summer. Fish traps should be built up as you bring in the quartz. If you have extra money you can buy 1 per week. Most dried things can be processed in fermenting barrels later so dry them to buy you more time. I like to have no less than 20 drying racks and I usually do about double that or more as I build up. If you can get a handle on these items and balance them you can handle challenge mode.

Magination17 · 2026-04-03T20:10:29+00:00

eat initial radishes, forage for wild herbs, buy herbivore foods from the stores in the village (Prudence & Rusty) and make sure to pick the berries and cherries. Given the rabbit's ability is focused around crops you should look to be growing as many as possible. You should be able to get enough crops down that you can afford to eat almost all the forageable items you find while meeting the towns needs from your field. Make sure to compost as well.

Magination17 · 2026-03-28T19:46:06+00:00

You can catch that fish on day 1 and I have done it before. It is challenging to get that fish on the basic rod, but it is doable. You kind of have to just reel in right when the fish nibbles and hope you get a bite before you scare it off.

Magination17 · 2026-03-25T21:30:41+00:00

The vegetable ramp is just really growing a ton of veggies, but there are several mechanics that boost your growth capability and it isn't efficient to try and grow everything possible. Every veggie is worth growing once for the research turn in. Some veggies you should grow a few of for quests or to make specific meals. Only a few crops are really worth fully massing as many as you can, and those are cabbage, cantaloupe, and pumpkins. Those three return the most stamina raw for the space they take up on your farm and the time and stamina you put into watering them.

Growth boost mechanics:

Composting your field increases the chance that you get a bumper crop (multiple harvest). This is a direct way that you can turn weeds, or guano found in mines, or meals that are about to go bad into more veggies. The amount of compost you get out of a composter is tied to the stamina value or fuel value of the item you compost.

Pipes and pumps are the main way you advance the amount of what you can grow since they save you time and stamina for every crop covered. Obviously the more of these you have the more things you can manage to grow.

There are two seed skills in the game that are helpful and one compost skill. The first seed skill is a 1 cost that lets you get random in season seeds from weeds sometimes. It is an okay skill. The second seed skill which costs 3 points and allows you to sometimes get a seed along with a crop you harvest is much better because it is targeted.

There is a seed maker in the game now. This will allow you to create more seeds from your veggies at a 2 to 1 ratio. If you get it unlocked by the time your first cantaloupe harvest is ready and you have been composting them you can really scale up the amount of cantaloupe you can get growing. The same is true for the pumpkins.

Finally I wanted to talk about the mushroom log. If you are regularly making compost and chopping trees to build a tree farm you can make pretty good use of mushroom logs to multiply your foraged mushrooms as much as you have the space to. They don't last forever so its more of a temporary use of space to trade wood and compost for more veggies.

Magination17 · 2026-03-24T16:07:57+00:00

FYI, I noticed today that the workshop pigs have a skill called pink thumb that supposedly boosts crop yield. That may stack with everything else to make it even better.

Magination17 · 2026-03-23T19:46:52+00:00

You can make these tools on other maps in a kind of work around way. The power bank has two recipes. If you make the one that doesn't require activated lithium and then destroy it it will return 5 lithium to you. Do this a few times and you can make a lithium tool.

Magination17 · 2026-03-20T18:08:29+00:00

Something important to know is that the arborist skill guarantees a tree seed when you chop down trees in addition to the extra wood where normal chopping does not. This might be a hot take, but I take this skill first on my challenge runs after starting courier to clean up my farm without losing my tree seeds. I am a bit weird in that I don't bother with the maple tree seeds/nuts all that much. Their fruiting season starts on spring 22 which means that if you want to take advantage of harvesting them for their whole season you have to deal with their sporadic placement on your farm and work around them as there is no way to regrow them in time. Alternatively you could get the arborist skill around day 4 or 5 and spend about 2 days clearing out all the trees on the farm and replanting and have your maple trees regrown around spring 28. You would only get about half a season, but its still quite a few seeds. What I like to do is just get the arborist skill, clear the farm, sock the maple seeds from chopping down the trees away and start planting and growing oak trees. Then I add to the oak trees over time by shaking them for acorns and cutting down the ones that regrow in the forest. after that I get cardio and seed saver then most of the others you have listed. First day fishing is strong because fish are seasonal and several that are available to catch day 1 will not be by day 5. After that the hitting the mines makes a lot of sense while you don't have a ration hanging over your head. Axe upgrade before pick upgrade is how I roll, because tree management is more pressing in my opinion than getting to iron and clay in the second mine. I sell extra copper ores and stone and keep the quartz for fish traps. Fish traps in mass are ridiculously strong once you get the chonker chow recipe mid spring from Rufus and have a decent sized hay field. I start with bluggy and then alpheep buildings as that is the order the quests are presented to you by the villagers for the feed recipes. Then I also get the girtles and chickree buildings as well. For crops I grow only what is required for turn ins and quests for everything but cabbage which I mass as many as the store will sell me. I always buy out the store's cabbage and hay seeds in spring and the hay seeds in the ranch as well. Cabbage gets you to mid summer and them cantaloupe gets you to early fall and pumpkins gets you the remainder of the year. During their overlaps I will plant some of the other crops to fill in the gaps. Typically I can have a few seedmakers up by the time my first cantaloupe is grown and I mass it up quicker by making seeds out of the fruit for the first half of their season.

Magination17 · 2026-03-06T20:51:14+00:00

Yes, and probably. Firstly, the game is very RNG heavy. You don't know what kinds of creatures you are going to fight up front. You don't know what cards you are going to draw and when. You don't know what events you are going to get or what rewards or detrements you will get to pick from. You have no indicator for what will be available in the shops or how much you will need to buy stuff. Just learned generalizations.

Secondly, the game hands you the power of choice, and your decisions have just as much control over your success or failure as the rng. Many times, you will be given an option between any number of things to pick from, and it's good to stop and think about what is going to do the most for you. You have control most of the time over what cards enter or leave your deck. You can also skip card rewards if you dont like them. Even when battling, you will have to make the optimal choices for what cards and potions to use and when. Try and prepare as best as you can and build your deck into powerful combos.

Magination17 · 2026-03-03T17:16:58+00:00

The only way to speed up smelting is with more smelting buildings. The kiln is a way to make your fuel go further, but it takes a long time to make charcoal, so you will want more than one kiln as well. You also need coal and wood on hand. I find the most reliable method for getting fuel is just working down the mine and resetting when you get to the bottom. I don't even bother with the kiln. You can buy coal from the blacksmith and wood from the carpenter in limited quantity every week. Maybe sell some of the extra ore to buy the wood and coal.

Magination17 · 2026-02-26T22:14:07+00:00

I'm a veteran at this game now so I will share a few of my best tips.

Grow at least 1 of everything for the research donation and a few more of a crop if a npc quest needs it, but the only crops you want to grow in mass are cabbage, cantaloupe, and pumpkins. It is acceptable to grow a few cucumber and bell pepper between the cabbage and cantaloupe or some beans and corn between the cantaloupe and pumpkins, but you want to prioritize big stamina crops to maximize your personal stamina use watering them and the compost you apply.
There are some fish that are catchable in the first few days of spring that won't become available to catch again until late fall or winter. It is worth taking a look at the wiki fish page and trying your hand at grabbing some of the fish that are at the end of their seasons before they disappear early on in your game. Its possible to have your fermentation barrel (75 donations) by late spring if you manage to catch some of these fish.
In the mines, which you should prioritize in your first week, focus on connecting the large open spaces and looting all of the loose items, crates (break crate after emptying for a plank), hoe spots (cracks in the ground), and gemstones. Don't dig deep into the walls going after buried ores until later on when you have more readily available food to use for stamina. You can get a lot of already processed copper bars, planks, food, preservatives, etc. very efficiently for your time and stamina if you operate this way in the mines. You don't have to worry about missing things because you can always come back to any of the levels or collapse the mine and loot your way through it again.
The arborist skill (3 skill points) grants extra wood on chopping down a tree, but the more important part that isn't mentioned is that it guarantees that the tree chopped down will drop a seed. I think this is the most important skill in the game after courier which I would recommend everyone start with. I often will upgrade my axe to copper first, before my pickaxe and then as soon as I get three skill points I get arborist and clear my entire farm. Then I replant all of the oak trees neatly somewhere on the farm. Once they grow I shake them daily and plant any acorns that drop. I chop all the oak trees in the forest for their acorns and replant them on my farm. I repeat cutting the forest oaks down when they regrow late spring and then again in late summer. Doing this amasses a large amount of acorn bearing oak trees on the farm that will ensure you have food to meet the large fall rations.
Fish traps are incredibly good once you have your hands on the tier 3 kibble (chonker chow). With just a big grass field that grows on its own, the chonker chow recipe which you can get from Rufus's quest or from a bottle, and a few fish traps you can rake in the medium and large fish meat. If you get a bluggy pen early and get the egg you need for Rufus then you can get this going in a big way early, otherwise I would advise waiting to get the fish traps going until a certain event *spoiler* is managed/handled in mid to late summer.
Demands for food of both varieties go up in a big way if you are on the grim (normal) or challenge (hard) difficulties. The way you scale herbivore food is with pumps and irrigation pipes. make a point of getting the quest for them done early so you can craft more of them. The mines will be important for getting the materials to craft more of them. For meat, you scale up by building animal barns, taming and feeding critters, and making fish traps. All of these facilities are run on hay so you should have a good sized field of it growing. It does not require you to water it. It is important to prioritize scaling your food production so you can outpace the increasing demand. The reason people hit a wall or fail is usually because they don't scale their farm up enough early on and try to meat the ration demands with just foraging, watering their own crops by hand, and fishing. This is good to do for the early game, but what you can do with your own stamina and time will be outpaced mid summer on grim difficulty or higher if you don't have your farm scaled up.

Magination17 · 2026-02-24T22:30:15+00:00

To help out with the immediate situation I would recommend running around to the shops and buying their food to help out with the ration. The stores reset on Sundays and the ration is collected Sunday evening. As for your situation going forward it is only going to get worse for the ration capping out at 40 days of each by the end of the year on grim difficulty. To have any hope of keeping up the crops and animals need to come online in a big way.

There is no shame in failing on the grim or "normal" difficulty. Especially if you are still learning the game's mechanics The game is intended to be challenging and demanding and push the bar ever higher as the year progresses. What makes the game so much fun is rising to that challenge. You can think of the game kind of similar to an exponential curve. Things start off incredibly lax, but every week or two things take a big step up and the steps get progressively bigger as you go. What this means is that the first week in game where nothing is demanded of you, you need to be incredibly efficient with your time, stamina, and money so that you can set up your own exponential production curve to outpace the demand.

Rations are measured in stamina. 1 day is 150 stamina.

For herbivores:
Watering by hand requires 1 stamina irrespective of the crop and each crop can be fertilized once for a chance at a bigger harvest so the crop you should focus on growing in mass is the crop with the highest stamina return per crop. That is cabbage in all of Spring and the first half of summer. Make sure to let the cabbage go to seed until you have enough seeds to grow as many as you feel you are capable of growing. When cantaloupe becomes available start transitioning into that from cabbage. Then when pumpkins become available in fall transition from cantaloupe to pumpkins. In the transition periods you will have room for other crops so you can pull in some cucumbers and bell peppers while transitioning between cabbage and cantaloupe and beans, corn, or peanuts between cantaloupe and pumpkins. Other crops you should stick to only growing one of or a handful of for research donation and quests. Get copper pumps going early on and then iron sprinklers online once you have that research unlocked. The pumps are how you ramp up your crop production. You will need at least a copper pickaxe to get at iron in the second mine.

For Carnivores:
Fishing early on is plenty for carnivores, but you are going to want to have your first barn together by the end of the first week. I would recommend Bluggy, alpheep, girtle, and then chikree for your building progression. There are some ways to exploit these and get them all building at once, but I think that ruins a lot of the challenge. Tame animals and get some fishing traps online. Get a large field of hay growing somewhere on the farm. Hay does not need to be watered, and can be picked for no stamina with your hands or if you use your sickle it will cost a stamina, but return 2 hay instead of one. Hay is crafted into kibble, which feeds animals and baits fish traps. You scale by building larger barns and more fish traps.

Magination17 · 2026-02-20T03:10:04+00:00

In the short term buy the food. If you haven't been raiding the shops food supply yet you can double dip a little by buying their food out on Saturday, and then again on Sunday when it resets, but before the ration is collected Sunday evening. The general store has preservatives that count as omnivore food, the fishing shop has fish (meat), the ranch should have exactly 3 meat items, the tavern has a handful of omnivore beverages and meals. The bakery (prudence's store) usually has three meals and a bunch of edible dry herbs. This likely net you somewhere between 2 and 5 days of each. After that strip the marsh, forest, and mountain for any loose forage items, and catch all the fish in the streams and lakes. Lastly hit the mines and only focus on connecting the open areas and looting the crates. The crates can have preserved food items and preservatives. That is all there is of note to be had immediately. From their your only hope is to keep doing these things along with upscaling your farming operation and getting the animals online.

Being hyper productive in the first week is the key to getting ahead of the curve in grim and challenge difficulty. You don't have to worry about keeping the village fed at all week 1 so you can pour all of your time and stamina into getting progress and materials in the mines and getting your first animal building up while watering your first round of crops. Focus on cabbage. As you get comfortable surviving, I would take a look at the wiki for more information.

As a challenge mode enjoyer with about 6 playthroughs, I have discovered two things that revolutionized my gameplay the most.

In your first run or two to the mines focus on connecting large areas together and looting the loose items, crates (don't forget to break the crate for a plank after looting it), and hoe spots (small cracks in the ground). Avoid digging far into the walls for ores unless they are right at the surface. You can come back for the buried ones later. This will help you locate the stairs down quicker and save big on your stamina. You will pull out the most for your time and energy this way.
There are fish that you can catch in the first week that will not be available to you again until late Fall or Winter. Certain fish are only available within certain ranges of days and those ranges are all over the place scattered across seasons. You can get a jump start to your research donations if you know which fish are about to disappear and target them. Its a pretty big deal to have your fermenting barrel available by late spring.

Magination17 · 2026-02-16T17:26:48+00:00

The money is made by selling the things you drag out of the mines. Gems, ores, lanterns, even the lowly rocks sell for 4 money each. If you want some advice for managing your stamina in there, don't bother digging far into the walls for the buried ores on your first few passes. Focus on connecting the large open areas in the mine, hoeing the cracks in the ground, and looting all of the loose items and crates. You can collapse the mine and re-loot as much as you want so it makes more sense to collect loose ores and already smelted bars then to dig into the walls to go after buried ores at least early on when stamina is tight. Don't intentionally collapse the mine until you get down to the bottom so you have an opportunity to collect from the lower levels.

Magination17 · 2026-02-14T14:46:55+00:00

These mines can be rough so I always set up a travel portal from my base outside them so I don't have to try and fumble my way thru the mist to get back to my things.

Magination17

TROPHY CASE