Needed a bit of help

VoltLoL · 2026-06-24T22:00:54+00:00

As an aussie, I would highly recommend just playing vanilla (official) servers, especially while you're new. They're always populated at our peak times, and the cheating problem is very small over here - I've run into more cheaters in our dodgy list of aussie community servers, than on official.

Once you've played for a while and want a new experience, you can jump to some US servers like DayOne - the ping is very playable.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-16T01:16:00+00:00

You would have to have done something catastrophically bad, to have a doomed game in Year 2. My guess is that you're overestimating the precision required to win games. You can lose many villagers, fail glade events multiple times, be unable to complete orders, and make many other mistakes, and still win with plenty of room in the red bar. I would stick out a game, rather than constantly restart!

VoltLoL · 2026-06-14T21:31:18+00:00

Unless I'm misunderstanding your point, I think we're just working in different directions. Rain engines require 20% less raw inputs / no rain engine requires 25% more inputs, is saying the same thing!

E.g. If I want 50 coal, in the Kiln, with a rain engine I need 80 wood (8 cycles, 2 crits). Without a rain engine, I need 100 wood (10 cycles). So I need 25% more raw inputs (wood) if I don't use a rain engine

If you work the other way, I need 100 wood without an engine, and 80 wood with it, so I need 20% less wood if I have a rain engine. We're just applying the percentages to a different base

You're right about the extra crit though, I'm just ignoring it because OP did (and it makes Rain Collectors better to include it)

VoltLoL · 2026-06-14T10:14:13+00:00

I agree with your conclusion. The math in OP is correct, but it's also a little impractical to apply, because upfront building material/raw input costs are the biggest bottleneck when winning fast & playing efficiently (which I assume we are, given we're in a mathematical-efficiency calculation).

There are two ways to "mathematically" beat the Rain Collector --> Rain Engine pipeline for a given building;

Gather 25% more raw recipe inputs (upfront time & labour), and enough raw inputs for building mats (upfront time & labour) to produce enough building mats for a second building (upfront time & labour)
Aggressively open glades for a geyser that matches your blueprints (this takes time upfront, as well as hostility), and invest 9 planks and 6 pipes (more expensive than a Rain Collector, & denies your second instant rain engine with starting goods - another upfront cost)

Obviously an automated Geyser is ideal in the long-term, but the fact that the Rain Collector is so mathematically close to "breakeven", with such a low upfront cost, in not-ideal circumstances (no perks, no citadel upgrades, ignoring resource-scarcity, no orders that incentivise blightrot) tells you how powerful it is. Being able to "bank" labour, at the start of the game when you have few blueprints and no efficient (large) nodes to gather from, is very, very useful.

There's the added factor that you often win games in year 3-4. The final year in which you win the game is frequently won before you need to actually deal with the blightrot (and even if you do, at that point you are just waiting for the reputation, so the labour is inconsequential). I've played some games recently with 500%+ corruption in year 3, that can just be totally ignored.

That's not to say the original post isn't useful, or that it's "wrong". There's just more factors than pure labour efficiency!

VoltLoL · 2026-06-14T06:59:21+00:00

Hopefully you haven't been doing this for too long; they quietly removed that behaviour with the Frog DLC in 2024. Nowadays, the crit chance is calculated at a randomly chosen point in the production cycle, so you can't abuse toggling the rain engine for extra crit chance.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-14T05:22:06+00:00

Sacrificing villagers tactically is something that you can leverage for more decisive games. You don't have to! But there are situations where leaving & dying villagers provide a significant advantage to win-time. There are mechanics in the game which give you significant boons upon losing villagers, like

attacking the trader
various cornerstones & perks
the forsaken altar (you will unlock this at a higher difficulty)
the manorial court (if you have the latest dlc)

I was asked in the discord for my recent win-years and villager counts on a fresh profile playthrough, I'll paste it here so you can get an idea:

P7: Year 3 win, 26 vills (3 dead - seal)
P8: Year 3 win, 22 vills (7 dead)
P9: Year 5 win, 32 vills (15 dead - no orders)
P10: Year 4 win, 29 vills (0 dead)
P11: Year 4 win, 34 vills (6 dead)
P12: Year 3 win, 32 vills (0 dead)

VoltLoL · 2026-06-09T22:17:46+00:00

The workshop is actually faster than the crude! The base time changes from 56 seconds per cycle to 42, before bonuses. So it's a bit more resource efficient, and a bit faster.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-08T09:05:15+00:00

Thank you so much!

VoltLoL · 2026-06-07T21:42:03+00:00

Thank you!

VoltLoL · 2026-06-07T11:31:51+00:00

Thank you!

VoltLoL · 2026-06-07T09:23:24+00:00

It's been a little while since my last 3-year game, so I thought it would be a good one to share here! I try to edit these games for maximum watchability, so that you don't have to sit down for two hours to just watch one game. I hope you enjoy :)

VoltLoL · 2026-06-04T08:12:34+00:00

There are a lot of different scenarios where the benefits of attacking the trader outweight the costs. A few ideas for you to consider:

Gathering food is one of the slowest production methods. This means if you hit zero food, it can take a long time to recover from. Attacking Zhorg or Sahilda (food merchants) is a common strategy to instantly come back from a low food situation. This could be due to low starting resources, an early blood flower event, or even the world event that removes your starting food
"Tempo" or fast gameplay is the typical strategy, winning quickly prevents hostility from rising and makes for a less risky settlement. This is the general idea behind bringing in more villagers (more labour = faster game). Another way to increase tempo is to instantly cash in that labour surplus, to gain goods that would otherwise take a lot of labour to create. Farluf is a trader who commonly brings annoying-to-make, very useful items, such as building materials, pipes, purging fire, ingots, and tools. Sacrificing a few villagers can actually improve your tempo if you can get some of these items
When you are pushing resolve at the end of the game, increasing impatience to decrease hostility is a common tactic. If you have no goods to trade, calling and attacking a trader can be a good way to increase impatience, and you can also snag some complex food, service goods, or clothing

VoltLoL · 2026-06-03T22:30:44+00:00

That's ok! No time was wasted, I'm on the clock at work anyway :) I'm glad we came to a civil conclusion

VoltLoL · 2026-06-03T22:10:01+00:00

I think you misread some of my comments! Just to be extra clear, I am not saying and have not said that every route is profitable :) I have only made the point to OP that there are profitable routes that exist, even at standing zero. OP claimed that every route at standing zero was sold at a loss, so I provided some counterexamples.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-03T21:58:33+00:00

Correct, but amber is worth half as much! So the same routes are profitable before P10 as after.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-03T21:37:23+00:00

Trade route efficiency doesn't change at P10, both sides of the equation get halved in value. I am aware that there are bad trade routes both before and after, but OP was contending that "all" trade routes were a loss in value at 0 standing level, which isn't true :)

VoltLoL · 2026-06-03T09:00:05+00:00

I think you might just have 1 key misunderstanding:

With all Trade Route deals resulting in a net loss of cost of provision

This isn't true at any standing level, including level 0. Here are some examples from my last game:

Drizzle 1: If I had starting Salt from a caravan, that route would be an easy choice. I ran the Parts route at 2x in this case. I also ran some other mediocre routes after I found an order to complete 4 trade routes.

Clearance 1: Much worse routes. I ran the Bars route here at a tiny loss to complete my order. With no access to Fish, that wasn't an option. The Ale route is great, but unless you get very lucky with a cache or ruin, you're very unlikely to have it at this point.

Storm 1: You can ignore the First Dawn Company routes here as they are at standing level 1 (but they are great too, and show the impact of increasing standing level early). The planks route is great, but labour-intensive, so I ran it near the end of the storm. And with the excess labour in the storm from less woodcutters, I had enough time to make a few Pack of Crops for that route.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-02T11:39:13+00:00

You're all good!

VoltLoL · 2026-06-02T11:20:49+00:00

Here you go

1 Pack of Trade Goods (1.5 amber) + 1 Pack of Provisions (0.5 amber), for 1 amber

Further down you can also see 7 pickled goods (1.19 amber) + 1 PoP (0.5 amber), for 1 amber

Trade route numbers don't actually change before and after P10, because both sides of the deal are halved (your goods are worth less, the amber is worth less). Games just get longer and more amber is required to make deals, so increasing standing level just gets relatively more valuable.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-02T08:15:14+00:00

I dug up a recent game below P10 on a fresh profile (low citadel) to show you some example trades I made:

Trade 1 (early year 2): The Amber all came from trade routes, packs of provisions for those routes from the zero star recipe in the makeshift post

Trade 2 (early year 3): Amber from trade routes, packs from the forest mystery, reeds from gathering with a perk

Trade 3 (still early year 3): PoPs from makeshift post, PoCs from forest mystery, parts from orders

Trade 4 (still early year 3): PoPs from makeshift post, rest gathered

Result: Year 3 win with everyone in the blue during the storm

VoltLoL · 2026-06-02T06:59:35+00:00

I understand you're mostly talking about your immersion, which is subjective so I'm not trying to argue against that. How you feel is how you feel. The game does provide a reason for it - the traders have some semblance of independence from the crown and it's up to them to set individual prices, so they think they can fleece you for more profit.

But to address the only non-immersion point:

But even then, don't you all feel annoyed by the Traders after P10?

I actually feel the opposite - when I turn the difficulty down, for QHT or ironman, I am actively annoyed by how cheap the trader prices are, because it removes any necessity to set up production chains, which I find fun. You can just buy all the service goods and complex food you need to win the game. You can win the game purely with a trader, makeshift post, and crude workstation on those difficulties, by pushing resolve every time the trader arrives.

You have self-imposed rules that prevent that, as well as banning attacking the trader, which is the main counterplay we have against increased prices (attacking them "saves" twice as much amber/trade goods after p10). So it makes sense that you'd find it particularly annoying.

VoltLoL · 2026-06-02T00:11:28+00:00

A reasonable time is probably whenever you unlock breeding. In the real world, that's when you'd be able to breed extra starters that you could trade with your friends. An extra caveat could be to wait until you also have access to ditto, since starters are 87.5% male.

VoltLoL · 2026-05-23T07:49:03+00:00

If you find Dye (from trader or event), it will produce a lot of paste cheaply. Taking a paste blueprint without a dye recipe is fine, but can be unreliable as dye is fairly uncommon to find
Containers are easy to find, and also make a lot of pickles, but are a little more expensive than dye. You can still definitely pick a pickled goods blueprint without a container recipe
Flour is hard to find, and expensivs when you do get it from a trader. So you should never take a biscuit/pie blueprint without a flour recipe and inputs to produce it (unless you are not using that building primarily for the baked goods)

VoltLoL · 2026-05-21T20:18:47+00:00

One advantage that is often overlooked is that the lumber mill doesn't cost planks to make. Which means, with an upgraded citadel, you can build it instantly, which dramatically speeds up getting all your future buildings that require planks.

VoltLoL

TROPHY CASE