Establishing a thriving colony in the unforgiving, post-plague world of Foxy Voxel’s Going Medieval requires more than just ambition. This colony-building strategy game, drawing inspiration from titles like RimWorld, tasks players with guiding a small band of survivors from a desperate wilderness encampment to a formidable stronghold. The depth of systems—from seasonal farming and complex construction to research trees and defensive warfare—can overwhelm new players. This guide provides the foundational knowledge to navigate your first days, survive initial threats, and build a settlement poised for long-term prosperity.
Laying the Groundwork: Starting Conditions and Settler Selection
Your journey begins with critical choices that set the tone for your entire playthrough. The game offers several scenarios, each with predefined difficulty, starting season, and number of settlers. ‘A New Life’ is the recommended beginner scenario, starting in Spring with three settlers and a balanced challenge. ‘Peaceful’ mode removes hostile raids for those who wish to focus purely on construction and management. For a severe test, ‘Lone Wolf’ begins with a single settler in Winter, while ‘Pioneer’ throws a trio of survivors into Autumn with aggressive raids from the start.
Choosing Your Map and Biome
Your choice of map and biome fundamentally impacts resource availability and strategic challenges. The Valley offers plentiful vegetation and fertile soil with mild winters, making it the most forgiving for newcomers. The Hillside provides uneven terrain ideal for defense, with fair resources. The Mountain biome is rich in mineral wealth like iron and silver but features harsh winters and scarce soil. Finally, the Marsh is a watery landscape teeming with fish and plants but lacking in land animals and mineable ores.
Assembling Your Founding Survivors
You begin with three followers, each possessing unique skills and traits. Rerolling or manually selecting them is time well spent. Aim for a balanced trio covering three essential early-game roles: a Builder with high Construction or Mining to raise structures; a Farmer/Cook proficient in Agriculture and Culinary skills to secure the food supply; and a Fighter with competent Melee or Ranged abilities for defense and hunting. Pay close attention to traits—positive ones like Hard Worker or Iron Gut provide significant boosts, while negative traits such as Glutton or Pyromaniac can create catastrophic problems for a fledgling colony.
The Critical First Steps: From Scavenging to Stability
The opening hours establish the rhythm of survival. Progress methodically to create a stable base before external threats escalate. A focused approach in the first season is crucial to weathering the challenges ahead.
Step 1: Immediate Resource Gathering
Before constructing anything, your first action should be to designate a stockpile zone and command your settlers to gather all loose resources within the immediate starting area. Prioritize wood, stone, and foragable berries. Leaving resources scattered wastes valuable time and materials that will be needed imminently.
Step 2: Constructing Basic Shelter
Sleeping outdoors exposes settlers to animal attacks and harsh weather, incurring severe mood penalties. Your first construction project must be a simple, enclosed shelter. A rectangular room with wooden walls, a roof, a door, and enough beds for your settlers is sufficient. Avoid overcomplicating the design; functionality and speed are paramount for surviving the first night.
Step 3: Securing a Sustainable Food Supply
Food is the most pressing early-game concern. Initially, you will rely on foraging wild berries and hunting game with ranged weapons. However, you must transition to cultivated farming and cooking as soon as possible. Build a campfire or clay oven to cook raw ingredients—cooked meals provide significantly better nutrition and grant positive mood effects. Designate a farming plot on fertile soil and plant season-appropriate crops like wheat or turnips to break dependence on unpredictable wild sources.
Step 4: Prioritizing Research and Development
Set up a research bench early and assign your most intellectually gifted settler to it. Never leave the research queue empty. Initial technologies should focus on unlocking improved farming tools, advanced food production methods, stronger building materials like clay bricks, and basic defensive structures. Research is the engine of long-term progression, moving your colony from mere survival to technological advantage.
Step 5: Preparing for Inevitable Conflict
Raids are a core mechanic and will begin occurring regularly as your colony’s wealth and profile grow. Before your first encounter, ensure every settler has a viable weapon, even if it’s just a wooden club or a basic bow. Consider your settlement’s layout; building near a natural chokepoint or erecting a simple perimeter wall can funnel attackers into kill zones. Stockpile extra food and have medicinal supplies ready for the wounded.
Mastering Food Production and Management
A consistent and safe food supply is the backbone of any successful colony. Management extends beyond simply planting crops, encompassing hunting, cooking, storage, and spoilage prevention in a cycle that requires constant attention.
Establishing and Optimizing Farmland
Once the necessary technology is researched, use the zoning tool to designate growing areas on flat, fertile soil to maximize yield. Crop selection must account for your biome and the current season. Wheat is a staple for bread and has a long shelf life. Turnips are hardy and better suited for cooler growing periods. Herbs are used for medicine but are a lower priority than food crops. Plant in early Spring to allow for a full growth cycle before Winter.
The Importance of Cooking and Food Quality
Raw food is inefficient and risky. Establishing a dedicated kitchen area with a stove, adjacent storage, and a workbench streamlines production. Higher-quality cooked meals, unlocked through research, provide superior nutrition and substantial mood bonuses, directly impacting your settlers’ productivity and happiness. Assign a dedicated cook with a high skill level to this critical task.
Combating Spoilage with Smart Storage
Food spoilage can wipe out a season’s harvest. The most effective countermeasure is constructing an underground or partially buried larder. These spaces maintain a cooler temperature year-round, dramatically slowing decay. During winter, above-ground stockpiles can temporarily serve as natural freezers, but they remain vulnerable to animal scavengers and raiders. Always practice stock rotation, consuming the most perishable items first.
Building a Defensible and Prosperous Stronghold
As your colony matures, priorities shift from bare survival to expansion and security. Your initial wooden shack must evolve into a complex, multi-layered settlement capable of repelling determined foes and supporting a growing population.
Advancing Construction and Material Science
Upgrade from flammable wood to more durable materials like clay bricks and limestone blocks as soon as your research and resource gathering allow. These materials offer greater structural integrity and better resistance to fire and enemy attacks. Plan your settlement layout with defense and efficiency in mind, creating designated zones for living quarters, workshops, storage, and farming to reduce wasted travel time for your settlers.
Evolving Defense Strategies
Early wooden walls must give way to stone battlements. Incorporate defensive structures like archer towers and murder holes into your perimeter. Utilize the game’s multi-level building system to create elevated firing positions. Managing your settlers’ combat assignments is also key; ensure your best fighters are equipped with the highest-quality armor and weapons you can produce, and position them strategically when alarms sound.
The path from a desperate band of survivors to lords of a medieval stronghold is fraught with peril, but it is a deeply rewarding journey. Success in Going Medieval hinges on understanding that every system is interconnected—a failed harvest strains food stores, which lowers morale, which reduces work efficiency, leaving you vulnerable to the next raid. By methodically securing your basics, investing in research, and always planning one season ahead, you transform vulnerability into resilience. Your settlement becomes not just a place of shelter, but a testament to strategic foresight, growing from a flicker of hope in the wilderness into an unassailable beacon of order in a shattered world.
