Overview
I enjoyed this simple colony sim and wanted to share gameplay tips I learned along the way.
Starting Out
You can play the game any way you want but I found this strategy gave me maximum enjoyment.
You start with two Sproots, one older and one younger. What I like to do is designate the older Sproot as the gatherer/breeder and the younger one as the learner.
The first things you can easily harvest off the map are pink berries and clay. Immediately harvest a clay ball for the younger Sproot to study and gather a few pink berries so the Sproots have something to eat.
Sproots can give objects to each other. Select the item in the Sproot’s inventory and hover over the Sproot you want to give the item to. For example, you will see the “give clay ball to sprooty” option. In this way your Sproots can share with each other.
By this time your Sproot has learned to make a clay pot. He needs two clay balls. Select craft above its head on the lower menu and build a clay pot near the nest which you can fill with pink berries.
Exploring
Send the older Sproot to explore the world. You need to do this because you only have a short time to gather a few necessary items.
There are five biomes in the game:
- Grass
- Mud
- Jungle
- Desert
- Dark (mushrooms & geysers found here)
They all have different items and mysteries you can explore once your Sproots are more comfortably settled.
For now gather sticks from the desert and thorns from the tall leaves in the jungle and give them to the younger Sproot to study. You need to make Spears right away.
TIP: If you want to go on a long journey in the mid to late game, start out when it’s raining. This way your Sproot won’t get thirsty for a while and you have a little more time to explore. This can help you find the geyser and the abandoned camp.
Mealybug Menace
At some point small white bugs, called mealybugs, will appear in a swarm and attack the bushes where pink berries grow. If the mealybugs eat the bush, it will be left as nothing but sticks as in the desert.
You should hunt them to extinction AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! If a Sproot has a spear in its inventory just hover over the mealybug and the option to hunt will appear. Keep doing this until all mealybugs are dead.
If I’m not able to get spears before the mealybug swarm I just restart my game, because I like having a comfortable base camp. Of course, you could always try to survive anyway just for the challenge.
Hunting
Now that you have spears you can go hunting. You have probably noticed other bugs crawling around the map. You can hunt any of them. They drop raw grub, which is a more filling meal than berries or yams.
The difficulty is that large ants can carry away your items. If you drop your spear the ant might just pick it up and make off with it. It takes two hits to kill a large ant.
My strategy is to get two Sproots with spears into position around the large ant. Then I rapidly choose hunt one after another. Hopefully they can each hit the ant once before it gets away with a spear. They drop a ton of meat so have enough inventory space to collect it!
You could also try equipping a Sproot with two spears and choose hunting twice that way.
If a Sproot hunts a lot, he will gain skills making it easier to aim and spear prey. I wouldn’t try to hit the small bugs until the Sproot has high skill in hunting and athletics. They’re just too fast.
Breeding
By now it’s time for the older Sproot to breed. Guide the Sproot over the nest and choose “Breed on Nest”.
Sproots can breed starting at age 30. They usually die at age 60 so don’t wait too long. Between age 30-45 is good.
If your Sproot needs water it will get up and get it and then go back to the nest. It won’t look in the pots for food, though, so have food in its inventory or make the other Sproot share food with the breeding Sproot. Because breeding takes a long time she will probably get hungry.
Finally an egg will come out! Now you can send your Sproot back to work. The egg takes a long time to hatch, too. You will know it’s ready when it starts to bounch high. Then a baby Sproot will come out.
It’s the miracle of life!
TIP: The baby (or any Sproot) can follow another Sproot. Just select one, hover over the one you want to follow, and use the mouse wheel to go down to “Follow Sprooty”. Then select the leader and the others will follow.
Teaching
The older Sproots can teach the baby.
Take the younger Sproot that learned how to make clay pot, spear, etc. Select the item and then hover over the baby. You will see the option for example “Teach about clay ball to Sprooty”. In this way, you can get the baby up to speed very quickly. They learn faster this way than studying alone.
Crafting
As you study items, you learn how to make crafts from them.
Each item can be studied three times. It opens up more possibilities about what to do with it.
I still haven’t found all the crafts. According to the developers, there are 13 different ones to discover.
Here are the ones I found so far:
1. Clay Pot
2. Spear
3. Trap
4. Garden Plot
5. Ladder
6. Nest
7. Bed
8. Water Bag
I’ll add more as I find them. Or you can let me know what you found in the comments and I’ll add it to the guide.
Farming
In the mud biome, you can find fertile soil where you can plant yams. These function the same as the “Garden Plot’ craft structure.
Just plant a yam there and after some time you can harvest it, getting between 1-4 yams back.
At the abandoned colony I also found seeds in one of the pots and planted them, getting squash.
Cooking
Explore, and somewhere at the edge of the map you can find geysers. These are in a biome with a dark floor, mushrooms, and holes that rise with steam. These are the geysers.
Gather food and you can put three at a time in the geyser. The developers said there are 8 meals. Here are the recipes I found so far:
1. Simple Meal (just random stuff that didn’t make a special meal)
2. Fruity Pudding (three pink berries)
3. Steak & Fries (2 raw grub & 1 yam)
4. Salad (3 foliage)
Death, or How Many Sproots?
Around age 60 your Sproots will die, but they can also die by getting hurt, hungry, thirsty, and having their health go down eventually killing them.
If you make or find a leaf bed, sleep on it to restore your health.
You can get an achievement from having a colony of five (5) Sproots.
But in my opinion, the game is much easier with two or even just one Sproot. It is much easier to control them and focus on what you’re trying to do. Running around the map with one Sproot increases his athletic skill which makes him even faster. I’ve found it’s easier to get the most done with one focused Sproot, but maybe that’s just me.
Just don’t let him die or it’s game over. Also if you have an egg but it hasn’t hatched yet there will be no one to teach the baby about items once it’s born. So this strategy can be risky.
You could also try specializing your colony with a teacher, builder, hunter, chef, and breeder–if you can keep track of that many Sproots!