The medieval world of Going Medieval is unforgiving. Developed by Foxy Voxel, this colony-building strategy game plunges players into a stark, post-plague landscape where survival hinges on meticulous planning, resource management, and resilience. Inspired by titles like RimWorld, it tasks you with transforming a small band of survivors into a thriving fortress against nature and hostile forces. For newcomers, the depth can be daunting, but mastering a few core principles can turn a precarious start into a prosperous stronghold.
Foundational Decisions: Scenario, Biome, and Followers
Your colony’s fate is often sealed by the choices made before the first day begins. The game offers several starting scenarios, each tailored to different playstyles and difficulty levels.
Selecting Your Scenario
A New Life is the recommended beginner path. Starting in Spring with three settlers, it provides a balanced introduction to the game’s systems without overwhelming challenges. Peaceful mode removes enemy raids entirely, allowing players to focus purely on construction and management with four settlers, ideal for learning the economic and logistical ropes. For a severe test, Lone Wolf begins with a single settler in Winter with scant resources, demanding expert micro-management. Pioneer starts with three settlers in Autumn but features unpredictable, frequent raids, prioritizing defensive play from the outset.
Choosing Your Map and Biome
The biome you select dictates your strategic priorities. The Valley offers fertile soil, plentiful vegetation, and clay, supporting robust agriculture but with moderate resources like limestone and iron. Its mild winters and fierce summers require seasonal adaptation. The Hillside provides uneven terrain excellent for defensive positioning, with fair amounts of limestone and clay, but moderate soil and vegetation. The Mountain biome is rich in critical minerals like limestone, gold, iron, and silver, but poor in fertile soil and vegetation, making food production a constant challenge amid harsh winters. The Marsh is a riverine landscape teeming with fish and plant life but scarce in land animals and mineable resources, pushing a reliance on fishing and foraging.
Assembling Your Initial Followers
Your starting group of three followers is your most valuable asset. Carefully selecting or rerolling their skills and traits is paramount. Aim for a trio that covers essential early-game roles: a Builder with high Construction and Mining to erect your settlement; a Farmer/Cook proficient in Farming and Cooking to secure the food supply; and a Fighter with competent Melee or Ranged skills for defense and hunting. Traits are equally critical. Positive traits such as Hard Worker, Industrious, or Iron Gut significantly boost efficiency. Negative traits like Glutton or Pyromaniac can cripple your colony’s stability. Investing time in crafting a balanced, capable team is a foundational survival step.
The Critical First Hours: Establishing Your Settlement
The initial rhythm of Going Medieval is methodical. Progress attracts raids, so establishing a stable base quickly is vital to weathering later threats.
Step 1: Immediate Resource Gathering
Your first action must be to create a stockpile zone and command your settlers to gather all loose resources within the starting area—wood, stone, and berries are priority. Leaving resources scattered leads to waste and deprives you of essential building materials.
Step 2: Constructing Basic Shelter
Sleeping outdoors exposes settlers to animal attacks and harsh weather, incurring severe mood penalties. Before nightfall, construct a simple wooden structure with walls, a roof, a door, and beds. A basic rectangular room is sufficient; overengineering wastes precious time and resources.
Step 3: Securing a Sustainable Food Supply
Food is the most pressing early-game concern. Initially, rely on foraging for berries and hunting wild game with ranged followers. Once materials are available, build a campfire or clay oven to cook raw food, which provides better nutrition and mood bonuses than uncooked meals. Simultaneously, plan for a farm plot to transition from scavenging to agriculture.
Step 4: Prioritizing Research
Set up a research bench early and assign your highest-skilled researcher. The initial research tree unlocks technologies crucial for survival: improved farming tools, advanced food production, durable building materials, and basic defensive structures. A perpetually empty research queue stagnates progress; always have a project ready.
Step 5: Preparing for the Inevitable Raid
On standard difficulty and above, raids often occur within the first season. Before this, ensure every follower has a viable weapon, establish a defensible position such as a wall with a chokepoint, and stockpile enough food and medicine to endure a prolonged conflict. Neglecting defense early is a common fatal error.
Mastering Food and Farming for Long-Term Stability
Food management is a continuous, complex challenge involving cultivation, hunting, cooking, storage, and spoilage control.
Early Food Sources and Transition
Early sustenance comes from scavenging: berries and wild plants foraged from the landscape and meat from hunted animals. This is unsustainable long-term, necessitating a swift shift to farming.
Establishing an Efficient Farm
After unlocking farming from the Research table, designate a growing zone on level ground with rich soil to maximize yields. Select crops suited to your biome and season; most grow only in warm months, so plant in early Spring. Staple crops include Wheat for bread with a long shelf life, Turnips for cooler conditions, and Herbs for medicine production, a lower initial priority.
Cooking, Quality, and Infrastructure
Raw food provides minimal nutrition. Cooking transforms it into meals that offer superior sustenance and positive mood effects. Research unlocks better recipes, increasing quality. Build a dedicated kitchen area with a stove, workbench, and adjacent storage to optimize your cook’s efficiency.
Managing Storage and Spoilage
Food spoilage is a relentless threat. Construct an underground or partially buried larder to create a cooler environment that slows decay. In winter, outdoor cold can act as natural refrigeration, but beware of animal and raider theft. Always prioritize consuming perishable items before they spoil.
Advanced Settlement Management and Defense
Beyond survival, prosperity requires expanding your settlement’s capabilities and fortifying its perimeter.
Expanding Production and Specialization
As your colony grows, specialize your settlers’ roles. Dedicated miners, crafters, and researchers accelerate advancement. Establish workshops for tailoring, blacksmithing, and carpentry to produce superior gear, armor, and tools. A diversified economy reduces dependency on precarious external factors.
Designing Defensible Architecture
Utilize terrain for defense. Building on hillsides or mountains provides natural elevation advantages. Construct layered defenses: outer walls with limited gate access, interior fallback points, and strategically placed archer towers. Traps and kill zones at entrances can decimate raider forces before they reach your core structures.
Managing Settler Morale and Health
Settler mood impacts productivity and can lead to catastrophic breakdowns. Provide comfortable bedrooms, varied and high-quality food, recreational areas, and beautiful environments. Maintain a stockpile of medicinal herbs and establish a clean infirmary to treat injuries and illnesses promptly, preventing cascading health crises.
The path from a vulnerable band of survivors to a formidable medieval stronghold is fraught with calculated risk and relentless challenge. Success in Going Medieval is not born from grand, singular actions but from the consistent, diligent application of these foundational strategies—selecting a capable team, securing immediate shelter and sustenance, investing relentlessly in research, and preparing for conflict from day one. Each decision compounds, building the resilience needed to not just survive the dark ages, but to master them.
