A simple Guide

Overview

Its just a simple guide to the basics of the game. If you haven’t already feel free to buy it here :)https://store.steampowered.com/app/366090/Colony_Survival/

Introduction

Welcome to my simple guide of how to play colony survival. I’ve played this game a lot in offline so don’t judge by my hours.
This is just going to outline the basics of the game, as well as some of the more complex mechanics in the game as well. The devs for this game are some of the nicest people from what I’ve who values what the community has to say, so why not jump into the discord and get talking to other people who play this game as well as the devs themselves 🙂
This is also still a work in progress, I’ll be adding more later I just have work to do 🙂

[link]

A Whole New World

This is just a short guide for new players just starting on their first colony. (how cute 🙂 )
Well, when you first start your time is best spent looking for a nice place to build a base, a nice flat area, perhaps even inside of a mountain. The location of the base is not important. When you’ve found a nice starting point to build your base, select the banner tool by pressing the 2nd key. This is the main hub for activities (more on that in a later section)

To open the crafting menu press “I and it will bring up a craft menu, Then craft the basic 4 beds you need to continue. When you press one it will change to another item on your “hotbar” called the “command tool” this is where you assign jobs to your colonists.

The banner is the centre of your colony, as said prior press 2 to place it. Before you recruit colonists ensure you have a basic base area a simple 2 high wall (or a 2 low moat) with a simple 1×2 entrance so then your base doesn’t get swarmed by the undead. Just remember to always have some part of the base connected to the outside world because else you’ll enter siege mode increases your food consumption exponentially (big boy word I was determined to use). As you will notice when you’ve placed the banner the area around it will turn green. This area is called the “safe” zone, no undead can spawn in this special little area thankfully and you can build safely in here. Around this “safe” area there is a huge red zone spanning most of the map. This area imma call the “danger” zone. In this area, the zombies can spawn and usually attack your colony from these areas (if zombies ever spawn in the green zone please report a bug in the discord server [link] thanks 🙂 )

After you’ve built a simple 2×1 wall (or moat) around your base area you can (somewhat) safely recruit your first colonist! Thankfully the devs were kind enough to save us from being swarmed before we have any colonists.

I usually start with 4 colonists. 2 farmers and 1 day guard + 1 night guard until I get enough food for me to safely say I can advance, that’s my strategy until I have a safe area with sufficient defences to protect myself (usually some kind of maze ish system which is 3 blocks high with the central block missing so my guards can shoot the zombies as they wander through. There is another variant of this which is dug into the ground. It is up to you what base type you are going for both of which do the same job

You get to construct a fortress made by whatever you wish to use and whenever you need more then…go gather them! Items like stone can’t (unfortunately) be farmed by your trusted Colonists which is a huge shame as you’ll have to mine out huge swathes of the underground biomes

First steps forward

At the dawn of a new day use the command tool in the first spot of the hot bar, or press 1, left-click and select berry farm. The berry farm is one of the first jobs you unlock at the start of the game without having to do any research for it. I usually go for the largest size possible to get the most out of the farm and the colonist that is farming it for you, the most efficient size is a 5×5 farm, its small so the colonists can get around it quickly getting food easily. Next, you should craft a crate and put it next to the plot, this is so he can deposit the food quickly. Now place 1 more of these farms (however big/small you want) and 2 guards (one night, one day (if you have zombie spawn on during the day))
Placing the guards higher up on a platform he can walk up to will give him a little more protection whilst guarding the entrance to your base, this will provide a basic defence for your colony from the zombies. Now we have a basic defence and a simple food income let’s move on to…

Now we all know about Minecraft and the concept is simple, dig a hole and go mining. The same rule applies, don’t dig straight down else you won’t be able to get back up, so a simple tunnel going down to the bottom of the world is suitable for a basic mine shaft. The bottom of the world is shown via the dark grey stone. Dig out a room and use a command tool to place a miner on the stone to auto gather the stone you need for your base (this can also be used for making ammo that your guards will be using to protect your colony. I’d recommend leaving a bed and a crate underground with your miners so they don’t have to travel to the surface at night time. Now you’ve got a simple mining system lets move on to…

This should be short but extremely invaluable to know. Open the crafting menu and craft a workbench. When it’s crafted place it on the ground relatively close to a crate. This will make a colonist a crafter. The crafter job is relatively simple, he makes stuff for you. So our guards need ammo, shock horror, am I right? Well, you can auto craft ammo for the guards so they never run out of ammo. Now, if you click on the workbench you will see something that looks like this

you can adjust and alter the slider depending on the needs of your particular colony and what you are the lowest on. These sliders can be altered as and when you need to, this is where our miner comes. Now we have a steady supply of stone, the crafter can now make ammo for the slinger!! It’s simple yet powerful and a very good direction to go in to develop a basic independent colony. Always keep your food positive (if possible) so ensure you don’t over-expand your colony

Colonists and their jobs/roles

There are quite a few jobs and most of their roles are relatively self-explanatory but I’ll add this section in just so it’s here if you wanna know lol

Unemployed
These are your default colonists, they don’t have a job so tend to stand on the flag doing nothing all day just consuming your food (either give them a job or fire them!)

Berry Farmer
The most basic of the food farmers, their role is simple but extremely invaluable at the start of the game, they simply plant and collects berries in a berry farm zone.

Wheat Farmer
Another food farmer + another self-explanatory roles. They simply just plant and harvest wheat in a wheat farm zone that you designate for them.

Flax Farmer
Plants and harvests flax in a flax farm zone which is used for researching things and making linen

Hollycock Farmer
Plants and harvests hollyhock in a hollyhock farm zone which requires arable ground.

Wolfsbane Farmer
Plants and harvests wolfsbane in a wolfsbane farm zone.

Alkanet Farmer
Plants and harvests alkanet in a alkanet farm zone.

Forester
Plants and harvests trees in a zone designated by you.

Miller
Works at a grindstone turning wheat into flour.

Baker
Uses the flour from the miller to produce bread in a furnace, very good food source.

Slinger Guard
Shoots rocks at zombies by using a slingshot.

Archer Guard
Shoots bronze headed arrows at zombies.

Crossbow Guard
Shoots iron-tipped bolts at zombies.

Matchlock Guard
Shoots lead bullets at zombies.

Miner
Works in a miner zone collect resources infinitely (works on stones and all of the ores that randomly generate underground, deserves its own section tbh)

Smelter (Furnace)
Works at the furnace block making bronze and bricks.

Smelter (Bloomery)
Works at the bloomery block.

Smithy
Works at a bronze anvil, smiths ingots into items.

Log Splitter
Works at a chopping log making essential firewood.

Tailor
The Tailor turns the flax you farm into linen which can be used in various recipes (such as clothing, white carpets and linen bags/pouches)

Monsters

As of right now, there are only 3 types of monsters I thought this would be worth an input
While zombies are the only monster currently in-game there are several variants. Each variant has a different appearance to show how much health they have. As well as the varying amounts of health, There are also 3 different speeds that the zombies can have. Slow (seems super common to spawn with), medium (seems a little uncommon) and fast (seems rare). Zombies target colonist, the player and the flag, spawning outside the safe radius and heading down the shortest path to the flag diverting when they get close to a player or colonist. When a zombie hits the flag there is a chance that a colonist somewhere else will die, this mechanic is great purely because you can’t just leave your flag unprotected without consequences.

• Grey Zombie

  The weakest and most common type of zombie. Two hits from a stone slinger or one hit from any other guard will kill it. However, do not underestimate it. Its strength is in numbers, often overwhelming slower reloading types of guards.

  
• Zombie with Green Shirt

  Slightly stronger than the grey zombie and it requires two hits from bowman. Although only one from crossbowmen and up. Less common than the grey variety but can be a problem as it shows up rather early game and can take a few hits
  

• Brown Zombie

  Toughest of the three zombies with the most health and the highest damage output (i believe at least) and is also the least common of all of the zombies.

Farming

As the game is still in development there is only 3 food types in the game. Berries which are the first source of food, wheat which comes after researching it, and bread which is unlocked after wheat farming. All of which are earned via farming with only bread being the odd one out because there is a process to get to it.

Berries are the first food type you will encounter when you start up the game. You can automatically get a colonist to farm it. Berries don’t require any research or any processing which means they are an invaluable source of food at the start. Each bush is only worth about 0.6 food (so not much) but the berries grow FAST. The most efficient farm size is 5×5 purely because its contains a decent amount of bushes so the colonist can harvest them all significantly faster than a huge farm of it.

After you complete the bread making research you unlock the ability to grow wheat! Which is amazing, wheat is simply a raw food source, meaning its only worth about 0.4 food, so not so valuable. However after you begin milling it and turning it into bread the food output is significantly increased (more below)

Bread is by far the most valuable food source in the game, its worth a staggering 3 food and definitely earns it. To make it you need the ingredients:

• 1 firewood
• 5 flour

You’ll get 2 bread out of this simple recipe, (equivalent of 6 food)This sounds expensive but if you do a bit of maths (5×0.4=2) then you are gaining an extra 4 food for Free! (or 1 piece of firewood, depends how you look at it tbh)

Game Mechanics!

The core of the game is that you place a flag to establish a “zone of control” (the area I called the safe zone and what is essentially your base). You hire colonists with food to automatically do various jobs, such as crafting, farming, a tree growing, cutting and more. Monsters spawn every night in the “danger zone” away from your flag beginning at 30 blocks, your “zone of control” can be increased if certain research is achieved and the prerequisites of the research are also met. In-game time is exactly 120 times faster in Colony Survival than in real life, resulting in a 12-minute day/night cycle. A day lasts for 7 minutes and 30 seconds, and night lasts for 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Colonists will only work during the day and will go to sleep in the nearest (random) bed at night, except for any guards you have set to guard during the night and sleep during the day.

Plants
Wheat has a 3 day growth cycle which changes at midnight into its next stage of growth

Miners

Miners, as explained earlier, is one of the first units you unlock after starting a new game. Their gathered resources are deposited into a nearby crate where it automatically is deposited into the colony “stockpile”

The miner can be set to mine any ores and materials found at the various layers of the world.

The (rough layout) of the layer spawning is

• 1 layer grass
• 4 layers of dirt
• 6-8 layers of pure stone (no ores)
• 2 layers where copper and tin can spawn
• 5 layers where darkstone can spawn
• 2 layers of iron/clay and gypsum
• ANOTHER 5 layers of dark stone
• 5 layers of gold and coal
• 5 more layers of dark stone
• 2 layers of saltpeter and galena
• from there to bedrock it is darkstone

All in all there is 10 different mineable items within the game (clay, coal, gold, Gypsum, Iron, Copper, Salt Peter, Galena, Tin and finally stone) all of which are fully automnical