Going Medieval is a colony-building strategy game by developer Foxy Voxel, with inspiration from titles like RimWorld. It tasks players with rebuilding in a dark, post-plague medieval world with nothing but a small band of survivors. Your job is to carve out a settlement in the wilderness, managing everything from food production and construction to research and combat.
If you’re new to Going Medieval, it can feel overwhelming. The game packs an enormous amount of depth within its medieval aesthetic. This beginner’s guide will walk you through the essentials, so you can get your colony off the ground, survive your first raids, and lay the foundations for a prosperous stronghold!
Choosing Your Starting Conditions
Scenarios
- A New Life
- Each settler has a story about the past they left far behind. But now, this tattered group has a common goal: to build a new home together.
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Starting Season: Spring
- Settlers: 3
- Peaceful
- There are no enemy attacks. Choose this game mode if you prefer to focus on constructing your settlement and taking care of your settlers.
- Difficulty: Easy
- Starting Season: Spring
- Settlers: 4
- Lone Wolf
- This settler starts alone, with meagre resources in the harshest of conditions.
- Difficulty: Experienced
- Starting Season: Winter
- Settlers: 1
- Pioneer
- Start with 3 settlers. Survive an onslaught of unpredictable enemy attacks.
- Difficulty: Experienced
- Starting Season: Autumn
- Settlers: 3
Map and Biome Selection
There are currently four map types to select from:
- Valley
- Plentiful vegetation, fertile soil, and clay. Moderate amount of limestone. Lesser amounts of iron and salt.
- Mild Winters
- Fierce Summers
- Hillside
- Uneven terrain, suitable for a good defensive position. A fair amount of limestone and clay. A moderate amount of fertile soil and vegetation.
- Mountain
- Plentiful limestone, gold, iron, and silver. Lesser amounts of fertile soil, clay, and vegetation.
- Harsh Winters
- Mild Summers
- Marsh
- A watery, riverine landscape, rich in plant life and teeming with fish. Land animals and mineable resources are scarce.
- Mild Winters
Starting Followers
You begin your journey with three followers. Each offers a unique set of skills and traits, and you can reroll or manually select followers before starting. You want to aim for a group that covers three core early-game pillars:
- Builder: A follower with a high Construction and/or Mining skill to help you build your settlement from the ground up.
- Farmer/Cook: Food is vital to survival, so find a follower with high Farming and Cooking skills to satiate your settlement.
- Fighter: A follower with decent Melee or Ranged skill can help fend off raids and hunt animals for sustenance early on.
Your followers’ traits matter, too. Positive traits, such as Hard Worker, Industrious, or Iron Gut, provide a significant boost. Negative traits, like Glutton or Pyromaniac, cause severe problems. It’s worth spending time rerolling until you land a solid group.
Your First Hours in Going Medieval
For the most part, the opening few hours of Going Medieval follow a predictable, occasionally slow rhythm. The faster you complete a few early-game goals, the more stable your colony overall. But of course, progress attracts attention. As you grow, your colony’s risk profile grows, with raids becoming more commonplace.
But let’s not focus on combat just yet. For now, here are the first few steps for the early hours of Going Medieval:
Step 1: Gather and Stockpile Resources
Before you dive into anything else, prioritize creating a stockpile zone and start gathering loose resources scattered around the starting area. You want wood, stone, and berries, especially, but don’t leave anything useful behind. Anything left uncollected will inevitably go to waste.
Step 2: Build Shelter Before Dark
Your followers won’t enjoy sleeping outdoors. It puts them at risk for animal attacks and exposure to the elements. A basic wooden structure with walls, a roof, a few beds, and a door is enough to survive the first night. Don’t overengineer. A rectangular room gets the job done and will avoid mood penalties.
Step 3: Establish a Food Source
Food is the most pressing resource in Going Medieval. Early on, you’ll rely on foraging for berries and hunting wild game. Once you have the necessary materials, build a campfire or clay oven for cooking, then plan a farm plot. Raw food provides minimal nutrition, but it works in a pinch. You want cooked meals, which fill followers and grant mood bonuses.
Step 4: Research
Set up a research bench early and assign the follower with the highest Research skill. The early research tree unlocks prove crucial to your survival. You want better farming tools, improved food production, more durable building materials, and essential defensive structures.
Never leave your research queue empty. Always have something on deck for when your follower has downtime.
Step 5: Prepare for Your First Raid
As mentioned, combat is an inevitability. Raids will come, often within the first in-game season if you’re playing on standard or up. Before the raid, try to have at least one viable weapon per follower, a defensible structure, like a wall with a chokepoint, and stockpile enough food and medicine to last an extended engagement.
Food & Farming
Ensuring your followers have access to food is an ongoing management challenge you’ll endure throughout your time in Going Medieval. Food management here involves growing crops, hunting, cooking, storing food correctly, and managing spoilage.
Early Food Sources
Early on, take what food you can find, including:
- Berries and wild plants: Found scattered across the map, ready for foraging.
- Hunting: Followers with the ranged skill can hunt animals for meat once they have a bow and arrow.
Setting Up Your Farm
Once you unlock farming tech from the Research table, designate a growing zone from the same zoning menu as your stockpile. Choose level ground with rich soil to boost crop yields and quality. Then, select crops appropriate to your biome and season. Most crops only grow during the warm months, so try to plant in the early spring.
A few staple crops include:
- Wheat: Key for bread production; long shelf life.
- Turnips: Hardy crops designed for cooler conditions.
- Herbs: Used for medicine; low priority initially.
Cooking and Food Quality
Do not eat raw food if you can avoid it. A cooked meal provides more nutrition per unit and grants mood bonuses. As you research more and better cooking recipes, the quality and nutritional value increase.
It’s best to build a dedicated kitchen area with a stove, workbench, and storage nearby to ensure your cook can work efficiently.
Food Storage and Spoilage
- Build an underground or partially buried larder for a cooler environment that slows spoilage.
- In winter, cold outdoor temperatures may act as natural refrigeration, but be wary of wild animals and raiders.
- Prioritize eating fresh, perishable food before everything spoils.