Welcome to The Settlers Online
This a guide in progress to assist new players in navigating the beginning quests. Sections will be added as completed.
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Welcome to The Settlers Online
This a guide in progress to assist new players in navigating the beginning quests. Sections will be added as completed.
Level 1
- Pinewood Plank Production - Your First Building
Level 2
- Pinewood Plank Production - Build a Sawmill
- Pinewood Plank Production - The Mayor's House
Level 3
- Pinewood Plank Production - Replanting Trees
- Pinewood Plank Production - Economy Overview
Level 4
- Stone Production - The Tavern
- Instant Build (Side Quest)
- Pinewood Plank Production - Perfect Wood Production
- Pinewood Plank Production - Surplus of Wood
- Pinewood Plank Production - Making Production Chains Perfect
Level 5
- Stone Production - To Hire Specialists
- Stone Production - The Geologist
- Time is Money (Side Quest)
- Stone Production - Masons
When you first start the game, your island will look like this:
It does not look like much yet, but with a lick of work, it will grow. The Mayor house is a combination of residence and storage house; it has space for 50 settlers and starts with a storage of 500 units of each type of product you can have. To grow your settlement, you will need to place additional buildings. For now, you will be given quests that will activate additional buildings and instruct you on how to place them and manage your economy. As a reminder, until your settlement is producing all you need to make buildings or you can actively trade for resources, follow the guide strictly and avoid the unnecessary use of resources.
At the start, you should receive your first quest chain:
This chain will teach you how to make the first resource needed for your island, pinewood. There are several quests in this quest line, and following this line will bring you through the next several levels. Here are the individual quests in the quest line:
The first quest in the series is Your First Building, where you will construct your first pinewood cutter:
To access the building menu, you must select the build menu icon from the bottom of your screen:
The build menu icon looks like a scaffolding house, and is first on the row of icons. As shown here, during the early quests, new areas and features will be highlighted with a flashing amber outline. This will help guide you until are familiar with the location of these buttons.
When you click on the build menu icon, the building menu will pop-up:
You will notice that the first icon, the pinewood cutter is highlighted and is the only building available. This will close the menu and allow you to place the building on your island.
After placing the cutter, the island now looks like this:Quote:
Advanced Note: Cutters and Foresters use deposits in their operations. Wood deposits are scattered throughout the island. The products of the building are brought to the closest storehouse, which in the beginning of the game is only the Mayor's House. The overall speed of production depends on the distances the workers travel as well as the baseline speed of production. Placing these buildings on the straightest route will provide the fastest production in buildings of this type.
The choice of position of the pinewood cutter is based on advanced knowledge of what will be required in future quests and game mechanics. Future building placement will be based on similar choices and will be be shown progressively.
Placement of the pinewood cutter will complete the quest:
And will provide enough experience to complete the level and start level 2.
The next quest in the Pinewood Plank quest line requires you to build a sawmill that converts the pinewood logs that are being harvested by the cutter you made in first quest:
To build a sawmill, you need need to access the building menu through the build menu icon, as shown:
The pinewood sawmill icon is highlighted for the quest, and can be selected and the building placed on your island. The ideal place to put the sawmill is close to the Mayor's House. When placing, you will want to minimize the travel time, which with the Mayor's house will be 40 seconds in the best position. Later in the game, the sawmill can be moved to a better location that will suit your developing economy more.
The next step in the quest chain is to take a closer look at the Mayor's house. The Mayor's House is the first storehouse for the game, although will be able to build other storage units later on. From the Mayor's House, you can see the total inventory of your storage, grouped by the category of the resource:Quote:
Advanced Note: Workshops that do not use a deposit have a total production time that varies on the distance from the entrance of storehouse to the entrance of the workshop. Proper placement of buildings will be important when trying to optimize production.
These are the steps of the quest:
The tabs are highlighted on the Mayor's House pop-up, and can be opened sequentially to complete the tasks of the quest. All five resource tabs must be opened.
Opening the last section will complete the quest:
And will provide enough experience to move to the next level.
The next quest in the pinewood plank quest chain asks you to build a pinewood forester. The forester replaces the contents of a deposits, working on the closest deposit in need of refilling.
The build menu is accessed through the lower icon row:
The pinewood forester, as highlighted above, can be placed on your island. For overall efficiency, the forester is placed near the previous placed cutter, as shown here
The next step in the quest chain is to improve the production of pinewood logs by increasing the number of cutters.
The method for placing pinewood cutters is shown in the level 1 quest where it is first placed. The cutter is selected from the build menu, then placed on the island.
Next, the game will introduce you to the Economic Overview, which will be used throughout the game.
The economy overview is accessed through the abacus icon on the lower row, as shown here:
Pinewood planks are building materials, and end products in a production chain. You can open the list of these resources by selecting the group on the left side of the interface.
Pinewood planks are the first resource of the list. The details of the chain are opened by clicking on the item on the list.
The chain shows the three resources in the chain for producing pinewood planks: pinewood deposits, pinewood logs, and pinewood planks.
The economy overview uses a colour coded system to show the net production of the chain. Green signifies that the net production of the end-product resource is positive, and all resources required to produce that end-product also have a net positive production. Yellow signifies that the net production of the end-product is positive, but one or more for the resources required to make that end-product is being consumed more than it is produced. Red signifies that the end-product is being consumed more than produced, for a net negative balance
http://i63.tinypic.com/2dborp5.jpg
Clicking on the pinewood deposit will show the building that contribute to its production and consumption.
As you can see here, there is a negative balance for pinewood deposits. Over time, this will mean the appearance of stumps on your island. This will be addressed in future quests.
Completion of this quest will provide enough experience to move to the next level.
A new quest chain, Stone Production, is given at the start of the level. This quest chain will be continued in the next level as well.
The portion of the quest chain for this level involves building a tavern. The tavern takes ten minutes to build.
The tavern icon is located in the basic building section of the build menu.
This shows the building tavern. Once this quest is started, the side quest for Instant Build will be given. You can use this to instantly complete the tavern, assuming you have already completed the New Settlers mail quest.
Clicking on the building tavern will open a pop-up which will show you the time and allow you to use the Instant Build function. This can also be done from the building queue on the right side of the screen, by clicking the gem icon on the in-progress building.
When the tavern has been built, both the side quest and the tavern building quest will be completed. You will return to this quest line in the next level, but for now we will return to the Pinewood Plank Production quest line.
The economic overview icon is located at the bottom of the screen, the second from the left icon depicting an abacus. Click on this to open the overview.
Pinewood logs is located under resources; click that section to open it.
Pinewood logs is the first resource on the list. Click on it to open the overview screen.
This shows the production chain from pinewood deposits to pinewood logs. The overall balance of pinewood deposits is shown;clicking on it will provide more detailed information.
The detailed view of pinewood trees (deposits) is shown here. Each side can be opened to show the specific buildings that are affecting the resource.
Once opened, the overview portion of the quest is complete. All that remains is to build two more pinewood foresters to complete the quest and move to the next one.
The next step is to build a second pinewood sawmill.
The next quest is Making Production Chains Perfect. This is one of the more difficult quests for beginners as it has some confusing terms.
Beyond what has already been completed, the main purpose of the quest is to ensure your pinewood production is in balance before moving to more advanced stages. The first requirement is that the pinewood logs be even or net positive; in other words, you need to be harvesting as many logs as you are consuming. The second requirement is that the overall production of pinewood planks be over 360 logs every 12 hours, which is the normal way the game reports the productivity of structures in economic overview. Fortunately, the positioning of the buildings shown in this guide provides for the requirements without additional work, so these elements have already been met when the quest is issued. All that remains is to again look at the economic overview, this time for pinewood planks.
Open the economic overview.
Open the building materials section of the overview.
View the pinewood plank chain.
And the quest is complete
At this point, our island looks like this:
The next step in gathering stone is getting a Geologist, who will be needed to find stone deposits on your island.
The tavern will give you the ability to purchase a Geologist, one of the specialists used throughout the game. Click on the tavern to open up its interface:
Once you have bought your Geologist, your quest is complete.
Next, to harvest stone for your settlement, you will need to find a stone deposit. There are several hidden on the island, and are in a fixed location. The Geologist will find it for you.
Once purchased, your geologist will be in your star menu. You can access the geologist by clicking on his icon.
Clicking on the geologist will open up the geologist interface. From here, you can sent him out to find one of a number of deposits. Right now, he can only find stone, which is highlighted below. Click on the icon for 'Find stone deposit' and then the green check-mark to send him out.
Once you send out your first Geologist, you will get the side quest 'Time is Money'. This will show you how to use gems to speed up your explorer searches.
You can see your geologists in the star menu even when they are out searching. When the geologist is searching, you get a different interface when you click on him. From this interface, you can speed up his search time by using gems.
Congratulations, you have found your first deposit.
Now that you have a stone deposit, the next step is building a mason to harvest it.
The button on the building menu for stone masons is the rightmost icon on the basic buildings tab:
For our walk-through island, the mason is placed near the stone deposits, to the north of the Mayor's house. As the mason uses both the deposit and the Mayor's house, the production time is the same anywhere in the same pathway. We will use this feature in later quests.
While you are building your first mason, there will be a side quest to find additional deposits. As your geologist is not being used currently, it is a good time to send it out again to find another stone deposit.
Both the quests for building your mason and finding additional deposits will be complete at about the same time.
And our walk-though island now looks like this.