Tips And Tricks Sharing

Gameplay
1

Just before I start this topic, I would just like to say hello to the Stonehearth community again, as I have not been on the discourse recently.

Now, I have decided to create this thread in order for the players of Stonehearth to discuss useful methods on starting a succesfull tow, and other tips and tricks on how to play this game as best as possible, that could be…

…Areas you should spawn
…priorities
…where to build
…what jobs you should assign
…etc…

I hope that this thread can help as many people as possible who are struggling to play this game on hard and normal mode!

2

When picking a starting area, remember the resources shown are just for the yellow square; the larger highlighted area will be your map. Try looking in a more general area, understanding that trees and animals tend to increase together while minerals are found more often in foothills and mountains.

Don’t forget defenses when choosing a starting area. Monsters can’t climb down sheer cliffs or swim (…yet?) so you can use lakes, foothills, and horseshoe-shaped mesas to limit the angles they can approach from. This makes it easier to defend than a spot out in the middle of nowhere.

When picking your starting Hearthlings, think about what you want to do. Craftsmen benefit from a high Mind, while you want your soldiers to have high Body and Spirit. This lets Craftsmen level up fast, while soldiers are going to be better in combat and stick around in fights.

Spirit’s also useful for Shepherds, Herbalists and Clerics, while Body also affects movement speed which means any craftsmen or Workers who’ll be doing a lot of running around will benefit there. Don’t just think about right now, think about down the line, too- a middling Mind might be alright for a Weaver who’ll be working on lots of Thread and Cloth without focusing on high level items, while your Herbalist will want a high Body when you upgrade them to a Cleric and they’re in the thick of the fighting.

Don’t be afraid to take it easy at first (at least in Normal); a Footman or two will be able to keep you safe from random encounters for a bit while you get your Craftsmen settled in and ready to make better gear. Storylines are at least partially predicated upon Net Worth, so building a communal palace out of the gate could get you in over your head fast, while sleeping (and dining) under the stars can let your Hearthlings level up before it gets rough.

The right number of Workers can make or break you- too many and you’re not crafting (or defending) enough. Too few and the place will be reduced to a crawl. I try to keep about five Workers running around, as that seems to be enough to keep up with your average settlement.

Pace yourself on large projects. Tell your Hearthlings you want to flatten a 120x120x8 hill and you’ll quickly discover your settlement has ground to a halt while your Workers diligently mine away. Don’t be afraid to break up big mines into sections you can pause, or tell a couple Workers to ignore Build and Mine orders to keep the goods flowing.

Rayya’s Children love their market stalls. Setting up several of these can be key- particularly in the desert. Buy all the wood you can every day so that when you need 100 logs to build lots of scaffolding, you can.

Maintain is your friend. Pay attention to what you want stockpiled and put Maintain orders on those things, then use more for trade goods. Here’s a list of my typical Maintain orders:

  • Weaver - 10 Thread, 10 Cloth, 10 Leather
  • Potter - 10 Clay Bricks, 10 Decorative Pitchers
  • Herbalist - 10 Minor Healing Potions, 10 Coarse Bandages
  • Blacksmith - 10 Copper Ingots, 10 Tin Ingots, 10 Bronze Ingots, 10 Iron Ingots, 10 Steel Ingots
  • Cook - 10 Vegetable Stew, 10 Meat Stew, 10 Corn Flour, 10 Wheat Flour, 3 Poyo Feed, 3 Sheep Feed, 3 Rabbit Feed, 10 Peasant Bread or 10 Corn Bread
  • Mason - 10 Bird Baths, 10 Stone Chests

I’ll often set up a Maintain on a craftsman I want to level up and then sell whatever they’re producing to traders, regardless of the value. It keeps the craftsman busy grinding XP even when they’re not actively helping the settlement.

When you head into combat, a good tactic is to locate a position your combat team can reach before the monsters do, then tell them to protect that spot. This keeps the Footman from running off ahead of the rest and ensures you’re facing them as a group. The AI also seems to do better with moving to a stationary point than trying to reach a moving target.

Also keep in mind that when they have nothing else going on, your soldiers will patrol your fields and stockpiles; if these are away from where the monsters come from you’ll have a delay in your response time. Using the Protect order to keep them at entry points will help.

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3

to add onto maintain tip from Joshua above:

Use multiple maintains to control priority.
e.g. I often set a high priority maintain for a small number for each required item, so that I can have at least a few of each item first, before I create a larger maintain for the “regular stock”.

e.g.

  • Maintain 5 Leather
  • Maintain 5 Cloth
  • Maintain 5 Thread
    …
  • Maintain 20 Leather
  • Maintain 20 Cloth
  • Maintain 20 Thread

This prevents the case where the craftsman is busy making the items above and starving the items at the end of the list. (e.g. you will have at least 5 Leather/Cloth/Thread before the weave starts making the 6th-20th Leather etc.

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4

Carrying on from the suggestion about good set-up locations: remember that you can move your town centre, your workshops, and even your stockpiled goods fairly easily at a later time.

For example, if you want to build a large fortress on a mountain top, you can set up a “base camp” in the foothills where you gather supplies; store a bunch of food and building materials into crates/chests/vaults (the bigger the better for when you go to move them), and then once you have your ground floor established you can move all the workshops and dining halls and so on into place. If you plan your move to get a set of crates up first, then the workshops, and then the furniture, and then the last of the stored supplies before your first lot have run out, you should never have to worry about hearthlings travelling between the settlements unnecessarily. Of course, you can leave a small dining area and food supply back at the original base camp until the very last wave of stuff to be moved, so if anyone gets hungry along the way they can eat there and save themselves a walk.

Or, for a simpler example: say you have a place picked out for the town square, and you put your banner down there; but soon the goblins and so on start making trouble… you can move the town banner into a cave or some other easy-to-defend location; and move in beds, crates of food, everything like that which you’d need for an extended siege. Even move some crafters’ workshops in so that the crafters can keep producing goods while your soldiers deal with the invasion. Then, when you get invaded, you can rally the civilians, suspend all outside tasks (mining, hauling, construction… just leave their jobs ticked), call off town defence mode, and have the crafters only produce what they can from the crates you have in the safe area. Meanwhile, the soldiers hold the enemy at the far doors, so there’s no disruption to your workflow; even though your whole town is effectively hiding in a bunker they’re still getting on with their jobs.

It can be easy to think of your banner/town square as a “passive” location, but if you think of it as a more active meeting-place then you can use that to control your hearthlings’ movements surprisingly well.

5

Having conflicting demands for military and workers?

Introducing
The Hedge Wall (my current town) Reservist Program

This is a “military program” I am using in my current game to allow me to adjust the military size more flexibly.

Just for info, my current town has

  • total population: 24
  • regular army: 5 (1 knight, 2 clerics, 2 archers, mostly at lvl 5/6)
  • reservist army: 10+ (archers from lvl 1 to lvl 4)
  • total field-able military: 15 (~60%)
    goal: 100% total field-able military of reservists cross-trained in Archer and Cleric.

Summary of program:

  1. Put regular army into any squad other than the first squad (default squad for newly promoted soldiers)

  2. When there are enough (or idle) workers, choose one or two, preferably with high body, and prefix a “R0” in front of their names. These are the Reservist-In-Training. Promote them to Footman and make them join your regular military. Can also apply to craftsman who mastered their craft and are not immediately needed for their craft.

  3. After an R0 reaches Footman level 3, change the prefix to R1 (Reservist) and release them back to become Workers. Pick another to train if available and repeat from step 2.

  4. In an emergency, activate the Workers with prefix R1 and choose the military job type that you need and have equipment for. (I prefer Archers). These will automatically be grouped in first squad, so you can quickly order them around. Either use them to support your regular army, or to guard your town while the regular army is going somewhere far away.

  5. After emergency, change reservists all back into workers.

  6. For reservist healer, use “H0” to designate healer-in-training and promote them to herbalist (may want to deactivate your real herbalist’s Job so that the trainee level up faster). Change prefix to “H1” after they reach herbalist level 2 and optionally demote back to Worker. Rinse and repeat. Activate all with H1 prefix as Cleric during emergency.

Additional notes:

  • Cross train reservists who have mastered a military class to gain more hp and more flexibility (can activate to whichever class that is needed more at the moment). Imagine a regular army backed by 10 Archers, or Clerics!
6

You’re likely to need multiple farmers to keep up with your settlement’s needs. I try to have at least one Farmer per six 11x11 (maximum size) fields. While fewer Farmers can eventually plant everything, your crops can rot in the fields if they aren’t harvested promptly. Cooks will harvest fields, so they can help, but don’t rely on them as they should stay busy converting raw food into cooked food, in order to extend the shelf life and make for happier Hearthlings.

On that note, while wheat and corn (and watermelons for Rayya’s Children) are tastier crops, variety is good and having fields of turnips and pumpkins can help. Plus the faster growth rate can help boost your stockpiles for getting more Hearthlings or offer you some spare change from traders.

On a similar note, move berry bushes inside your settlement so they’re easy to harvest. It’s an easy extra crop and you can place them anywhere for Workers to pick.

Oh yes- and don’t get food in your starting items. There’s always a trader will give you food when you begin, so spend that gold on tools you need. I tend to get a wooden sword, hoe, and Herbalist’s staff. Sometimes I replace the staff with a Weaver’s spindle, if I feel I won’t need to heal my Footmen early.