Rebuilding civilization in a harsh, post-plague medieval world is the daunting task presented to players in the colony-building strategy game Going Medieval. Developed by Foxy Voxel and drawing inspiration from titles like RimWorld, the game challenges you to carve out a sustainable settlement from the wilderness with a small band of survivors. For newcomers, the depth of systems governing construction, research, combat, and survival can feel overwhelming. This guide provides the foundational strategies needed to establish a thriving colony, survive the inevitable threats, and build towards a prosperous stronghold.
Selecting Your Starting Scenario and Map
The first critical decision in Going Medieval is choosing your starting conditions, which sets the tone for your entire campaign. The game offers several scenarios, each tailored to different playstyles and experience levels.
Core Game Scenarios
A New Life is the recommended beginner scenario. It starts in Spring with three settlers, offering a balanced introduction to the game’s core mechanics without immediate extreme pressure. The Peaceful mode removes enemy attacks entirely, allowing players to focus solely on construction and management, starting with four settlers in Spring. For a more challenging experience, Lone Wolf tasks a single settler with surviving a Winter start with meager resources. Pioneer also presents a hard challenge, beginning with three settlers in Autumn and subjecting the colony to unpredictable enemy onslaughts from the outset.
Choosing Your Biome
Map selection is equally strategic, as each biome offers distinct resources and climatic challenges. The Valley provides plentiful vegetation, fertile soil, and clay, with mild winters and fierce summers, making it an excellent choice for beginners focused on agriculture. The Hillside offers uneven terrain advantageous for defense, with fair amounts of limestone and clay. The Mountain biome is rich in mineral resources like limestone, gold, iron, and silver but has harsh winters and scarce fertile soil, catering to a mining-focused economy. Finally, the Marsh is a riverine landscape teeming with fish and plant life but scarce in land animals and mineable resources, posing a unique survival challenge.
Assembling Your Founding Settlers
You begin your journey with three followers, each possessing unique skills and traits. Carefully selecting or rerolling your starting group is paramount for early stability. Aim for a trio that covers three essential early-game pillars.
The Essential Early-Game Roles
A Builder with high Construction and/or Mining skill is necessary to erect your settlement’s foundational structures quickly. A Farmer/Cook proficient in Farming and Cooking ensures your colony has a reliable food source from the onset. A Fighter with decent Melee or Ranged skill is crucial for defending against early raids and hunting wildlife for meat.
The Impact of Traits
Beyond skills, each settler’s traits significantly impact colony efficiency and morale. Positive traits such as Hard Worker, Industrious, or Iron Gut provide substantial boosts to productivity and resilience. Conversely, negative traits like Glutton or Pyromaniac can create severe logistical and safety problems. Investing time in rerolling to secure a well-rounded group with beneficial traits pays substantial dividends in the challenging early days.
The Critical First Hours of Settlement
The opening phase of Going Medieval establishes the rhythm for your colony’s future. Progress attracts attention, and as your settlement grows, so does its risk profile, with raids becoming more frequent and severe. However, by methodically completing a series of early-game goals, you can build a stable foundation capable of weathering these threats.
Step 1: Immediate Resource Gathering
Your first action should be to create a stockpile zone and command your settlers to gather all loose resources scattered around the starting area. Prioritize wood, stone, and berries, but do not leave any useful material behind. Uncollected resources will decay, wasting valuable early-game assets.
Step 2: Constructing Basic Shelter
Settlers sleeping outdoors risk animal attacks and exposure, leading to mood penalties that hinder productivity. Before darkness falls, construct a basic wooden structure with walls, a roof, a door, and a few beds. A simple rectangular room is sufficient for the first night; avoid overengineering to conserve resources and time.
Step 3: Establishing a Sustainable Food Supply
Food is the most pressing resource. Initially, rely on foraging for berries and hunting wild game with your designated fighter. As soon as materials are available, build a campfire or clay oven for cooking. Raw food provides minimal nutrition and no mood benefits, whereas cooked meals are far more efficient. Concurrently, plan a farm plot for long-term sustenance.
Step 4: Prioritizing Research
Set up a research bench early and assign your most intellectually skilled settler to it. The early research tree unlocks technologies critical for survival, including improved farming tools, advanced food production methods, more durable building materials, and essential defensive structures. A key management tip is to never leave the research queue empty; always have a project ready for when your researcher has downtime.
Step 5: Preparing for the First Raid
Combat is an inevitability on standard difficulty and above, often occurring within the first in-game season. Preparation is key. Ensure at least one viable weapon per settler, construct a defensible structure such as a wall with a strategic chokepoint, and stockpile sufficient food and medicine to endure an extended engagement.
Mastering Food Production and Management
Ensuring a consistent, high-quality food supply is an ongoing management challenge that underpins colony stability and growth. This system involves farming, hunting, cooking, storage, and spoilage management.
Early Food Sources and Transition
Early sustenance comes from foraging berries and wild plants scattered across the map and hunting animals for meat, requiring a settler with ranged skill and a bow. These methods are temporary; the core of your food economy must transition to cultivated agriculture.
Setting Up an Efficient Farm
Once farming technology is unlocked via research, designate a growing zone on level ground with rich soil to maximize crop yield and quality. Select crops appropriate to your biome and the season. Most crops only grow in warm months, so planting in early Spring is vital. Staple crops include Wheat for bread production (which has a long shelf life), Turnips as hardy crops for cooler conditions, and Herbs for medicine production, though these are a lower initial priority.
Cooking, Quality, and Infrastructure
Raw food should be avoided whenever possible. Cooked meals provide superior nutrition per unit and grant positive mood bonuses. As you research more advanced recipes, food quality and nutritional value increase significantly. Build a dedicated kitchen area with a stove, a workbench, and adjacent storage to optimize your cook’s efficiency and output.
Managing Storage and Spoilage
Food spoilage is a constant threat. Construct an underground or partially buried larder to create a cooler environment that dramatically slows decay. During winter, cold outdoor temperatures can act as natural refrigeration, but exposed stockpiles risk theft by wild animals or raiders. A key logistical rule is to prioritize consuming fresh, perishable food before it spoils, preserving longer-lasting stores like bread and dried goods for emergencies.
Building a Resilient and Defensible Colony
Beyond survival, long-term prosperity requires designing a colony that is both efficient to manage and resilient to attacks. Strategic layout and progressive fortification are essential.
Strategic Settlement Layout
Consider zoning your settlement with distinct areas for living, farming, production, and storage. Keep key workstations like the research bench, kitchen, and workshops close to relevant stockpiles to minimize settler travel time. Plan roads or clear paths to improve movement efficiency, especially during winter when snow slows travel.
Progressive Fortification
Initial wooden structures are temporary. As you research stonecutting and masonry, transition to stone buildings, which are more durable and fire-resistant. Begin constructing perimeter defenses early, even simple wooden walls with a single guarded gate can funnel raiders into a kill zone. Later, build towers for ranged defenders and complex gate systems to control enemy movement.
Managing Settler Morale and Health
A colony’s success hinges on its settlers’ well-being. Provide comfortable bedrooms with beds, not sleeping spots. Ensure a variety of cooked meals and access to ale or wine for morale boosts. Build a hospital area with beds and stockpile medicinal herbs to treat injuries and illnesses promptly. Pay attention to individual traits and avoid overworking settlers, as low morale can lead to rebellions or reduced productivity.
The journey from a ragged band of survivors to a formidable medieval stronghold is a complex puzzle of resource management, strategic planning, and adaptive response. By methodically securing food, shelter, and research, then progressively fortifying your position and caring for your settlers, you transform vulnerability into resilience. Each decision, from the initial scenario choice to the placement of a defensive wall, compounds over time, building not just structures, but a legacy of survival in a world reclaimed from ruin.
