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A Complete Guide
Version 1.0
+-------------------+
| Table of Contents |
+-------------------+
0. Welcome...............................[WEL1]
1. Version Information...................[VER1]
2. Basic Concepts........................[CON1]
3. Generating Maps.......................[MAP1]
4. Menus.................................[MEN1]
a. The Bottom Bar.....................[MEN2]
b. The Top Bar........................[MEN3]
5. The Basics............................[BAS1]
a. Before Unpausing...................[BAS2]
b. The Crude Workbench................[BAS3]
c. Workshops!.........................[BAS4]
6. Advanced Gameplay.....................[ADV1]
a. Diplomacy (Incomplete).............[ADV2]
b. Metalworking (Incomplete)..........[ADV3]
c. Engineering (Incomplete)...........[ADV4]
7. Enemies...............................[ENM1]
8. Legal.................................[LEG1]
+-------------------+
| 0. Welcome [WEL1] |
+-------------------+
Let me start by saying this. This is the first guide I've
ever written, so please excuse me if it's not quite up
to par with what's out there.
Next, let me explain what Gnomoria is. Gnomoria belongs
to the rapidly growing, loosely defined genre called
"fortress-building", a sort of mash-up of resource
management, simulation and city building. Other games in
this genre include Dwarf Fortress (more or less the
'original' fortress-building game that everyone knows),
Towns and Stonehearth.
Many new players to the genre find these kinds of games
extremely difficult to get started in. The difficulty
curve in Dwarf Fortress is like running into a cliff face.
Gnomoria is more like a brick wall. It still hurts, but at
least it's easier to get over it.
The purpose of this guide is to give new players a gentle
introduction to Gnomoria and teach them the basics of
playing fortress-building games. In it, we'll cover the
menu system of Gnomoria and some basic concepts that apply
to most fortress-building games. Finally, we'll cover
some advanced topics that players will want to know for
when they reach late game.
My goal is to keep this guide as up-to-date as possible.
With that in mind, I should make you aware that this guide
is written for Gnomoria Version 0.9.8 (Steam).
The last thing I want to cover is how to use this guide.
You'll notice each area of the Table of Contents has a
three or four character code next to it. This is a quick
search code. Just press Ctrl-F and plug that tag in. Press
the Next button twice (from the top of the guide) and it
will take you to the relevant section.
Enjoy, and if you have any questions, comments, concerns
or complaints, you can contact me at
robloxianmany AT gmail DOT com. Please be aware that I
will not respond to questions that are answered in the
guide and any spam emails will result in your email
address being added to my block list (meaning you can't
contact me if you have a real question). Flames will be
used to roast marshmallows.
Enjoy the guide.
+-------------------------------+
| 1. Version Information [VER1] |
+-------------------------------+
Version 1.0 (Current)
- Finished the guide in its current form.
- Fixed most, if not all, the spelling mistakes.
Version 0.1
- All sections up to Advanced Gameplay complete.
+--------------------------+
| 2. Basic Concepts [CON1] |
+--------------------------+
The first thing we need to cover is some basic concepts and
terms. If you're used to playing fortress-building games,
you can skip the next few sections and jump right to the
basics of game play. If you're new, I strongly recommend
reading the entire guide in order.
The idea of Gnomoria is that you are the administrator of
a kingdom of Gnomes. You don't control the Gnomes directly,
but you can give orders and Gnomes who are assigned to
handle that kind of job will do it, after they take care of
their own needs (food, drink, sleep).
You can also designate areas of the map to have special
purpose. One designation that is almost universal to
fortress-building games is the stockpile. Your Gnomes will
take items they find lying around and put them in an area
designated as a stockpile. It may not seem like an
important thing, but stockpiles are critical to a good
kingdom. A well placed stockpile gives your Gnomes easy
access to the supplies they need, which can save them time.
Time is important if, say, you're being attack by a goblin
hoard and need you military to get their gear on as fast
as possible.
There are other designations and we'll cover them later
in the guide when we talk about menus. The next concept
I want to cover is that your Gnomes have needs. They need
food, drink and sleep. Food is obvious, but what isn't
obvious is why there's different kinds of food. Better
foods fill your Gnomes more so they can go longer without
food. The same applies to drinks. Sleep is similar, but
has some more complexities.
In Gnomoria, there are two kinds of rooms you can give your
Gnomes to sleep in, Dormitories and Personal Quarters.
Gnomes will also sleep on the ground if no beds are
available. Sleeping on the ground is the worst thing for
your Gnomes. They'll sleep a long time and need to sleep
before long again. Dormitories are only slightly better,
but better none-the-less. Personal Quarters are the best
room type, but that's not the only thing that affects
how well your Gnomes sleep. The value of their room
determines the quality of a Gnomes rest, but only for
Personal Quarters. Dormitories don't care about value
because your Gnomes are sleeping with other Gnomes.
You see, Gnomes are picky. They like privacy and they
like expensive things. If you want your Gnomes to sleep
well, they need their own, valuable room. You can increase
the value of a room by putting items in it that are
worth a lot and building the room's floors/walls out of
better materials.
The last concept I want to cover is enemies. For this
guide, I will be assuming you're playing on Peaceful.
Just to get you started. Even so, you should understand
how and when enemies spawn for when you play with them
turned on.
There are two kinds of enemies, Invaders and Spawners.
Invaders appear at the edge of the map. They include
wild animals, who will wander your kingdom and then leave
peacefully if left undisturbed, goblins and ogres, who
will attack, and Mants. Mants are a bit special. They
first send scouts. If a scout leaves your map, he'll
bring back an invasion force.
Spawners spawn underground, below depth -7, and only in dark
squares. They include zombies, skeletons, golems and
spiders. Spiders sound cute and cuddly, but think less
Daddy Long-legs and more Shelob from Lord of the Rings.
Spiders are the hardest enemy in the game and only spawn
at the bottom of the map. So beware of digging too deep
and too greedily right away.
The value of your kingdom has an effect on enemies. Value
(or worth) is the combined value of your stocks, buildings,
and Great Hall (if you have one). The more your kingdom is
worth, the better equipped enemies will be and the larger
their attack forces get.
Worth also has some positive effects. The more your kingdom
is worth, the more likely it is that you'll bring new
Gnomes to your kingdom, attract merchants and encounter
other kingdoms to trade with.
That about covers the basic concepts of Gnomoria. Next
we'll discuss generating maps. This is mostly to cover the
advanced options and what they mean.
+---------------------------+
| 3. Generating Maps [MAP1] |
+---------------------------+
When you start a new game in Gnomoria, you'll be asked
to create a map. You can name your kingdom, select the
size of your map, and your difficulty level. There's also
an advanced button that opens up a lot of features. I'll
cover them hear and give you the setup I'm using
for this guide.
Kingdom Name and Kingdom Size are fairly obvious. For those
who play a lot of games, you might know what a seed is
already. For those who don't, it's a number that serves
as a starting point for creating your map. The same seed
with the same map settings will always generate the same
map every time. Map settings are:
- Kingdom Seed
- Kingdom Center
- Flatness
- Hill Width
- Smoothness
- Metal Depth
- Metal Amount
If those settings are all the same, you'll get the same
map each time you create a new map. This is useful if, say,
you get a map with a floating island on it and want to
share it with a friend.
Now, let's cover what the settings actually do. Kingdom
Center is just another part of the seed. Only the
developers actually understand what it does. Flatness
determines how tall hills are on your map. Hill Width
determines how wide hills tend to be. Wide hills will have
more flat areas on their sides. Smoothness determines
how many hills will be present and how steep their sides
will be.
I'd suggest playing with these settings a bit and pressing
the Preview button to get a feel for what they do. For this
guide, I'll be using a Huge map with all the sliders set
to minimum. This will generate a perfectly flat map.
Difficulty has a bunch of pre-set settings for different
difficulties. I'll cover them in a moment. First I want
to talk about the Metal Depth and Metal Amount settings.
These settings control how deep you need to go before you
start finding metal and how often metals appear/how large
metal veins are. I've used Shallow and Abundant for this
guide.
Now, on to the difficulty settings. The next three sliders
do just what the names say. They control multipliers that
affect enemies. So for example, setting the Enemy Strength
slider to minimum will set it to 0.5. This means enemies
are half as strong. Similarly, setting it to 2 means
enemies are twice as strong. For this guide, I've set
them to minimum.
The next thing is a check box that is labelled "Increase
Enemy Strength over time". Checking this box will
cause the Enemy Strength slider to rise as you play,
making enemies stronger as time goes on. This setting is
only enabled by harder difficulties because it's actually
very hard. For this guide, I left it off.
The rest of the check boxes control which enemies will
spawn in your map. It's pretty simple. For this guide, all
enemies are disabled.
! WARNING !
Gnomoria Version 0.9.8 has a known bug that causes goblin
raiders to spawn, even on Peaceful. They're very weak and
unarmed, so your Gnomes should be able to deal with one or
two on their own. Even so, I'll be covering the military
menu just in case.
!WARNING!
One last thing. Changing any of the difficulty settings
will change your difficulty to Custom. Most players don't
realize what this means. If you use a pre-set difficulty,
you can change difficulties at any time while playing.
The moment you change to a Custom difficulty, the
difficulty settings get locked and you can't change them
any more. If you want to change them after setting them
to Custom, check out the Gnomoria forums and look for
Gnomoria Save Editor II. It will let you change the
difficulty settings (minus Metal Depth and Metal Amount).
It'll also let you cheat a lot, so use it responsibly.
Half the fun of fortress-building games is seeing your
Gnomes making the materials they need. It's like Minecraft
in a way.
Feel free to generate whatever kind of map you want. Just
be aware that this guide is being written under the
assumption you're playing on a flat, Peaceful map with
a Shallow Metal Depth and Abundant Metal Amount.
When you're ready, generate your map and take a look at
your new Kingdom. Next up we'll cover menu and controls.
+-----------------+
| 4. Menus [MEN1] |
+-----------------+
The interface of Gnomoria may seem complex, but let me
tell you, it's nothing compared to Dwarf Fortress. Be
happy you have a proper menu system.
First, let's cover some controls.
WASD - Move around the map
Right-click + Drag - Move around the map
Left-click + Drag - Move around the map
Left-click - Select a tile or start/stop a selection
Right-click - Open the context menu
Escape - Pause Menu
+/- - Move up/down through layers
Crtl + +/- - Zoom in and out
Space - Pause/Resume
Those are the bare-bones controls you'll need. You can
change them to your liking the options menu. Please be
aware that +/- means the +/- on your keyboard, not your
numpad. The game treats them separately.
Now, when you start playing, you'll see two menus. One
along the bottom of the screen and one along the top.
The top one also has the pause/play/play x2 buttons, a
readout of the current date/time, and a few other things.
We're going to focus on the bottom menu to start off.
+---------------------------+
| 4.a The Bottom Bar [MEN2] |
+---------------------------+
The bottom bar has everything you could ever need to give
orders to your Gnomes. You're going to use it a lot. I'll
cover each menu in order, including sub-menus.
--Terrain--
This menu is used for ordering your Gnomes to dig, mine
and work with the terrain of the world. The first two
sub-menus are labelled "Mine" and "Dig", appropriately.
They allow you to remove walls and mine stairs/ramps up,
and dig holes and stairs/ramps down, respectively.
There is a difference between ramps and stairs. Gnomes can
stand on stairs and do things on squares next to them.
They can't on ramps, they need to move off the ramp to
an empty square. Ramps are, however, faster since your
Gnomes can move off them diagonally. In the end, it
usually doesn't matter. Go with what you prefer. Just
keep in mind that you can't mine stairs, you need to
de-construct them.
The rest of the terrain menu is used for removing floors
and ramps for for what is one of the more useful features
of the game, swapping walls/floors. The swapping buttons
allow you to select an area of walls/floors and replace
them with another kind of material, without digging them
out and then building a new wall/floor.
The last button is for filling holes. You can only fill
a hole that is one level below you.
--Agriculture--
This is arguably the most important menu in the game.
Some people will say other things are more important but
in my opinion, without this menu, games wouldn't last more
than 15 minutes or so, no where near enough time to reach
the other content of the game. The agriculture menu allows
you to plant farms, groves (tree farms) and make pastures
to hold animals. Basically everything you need to feed
your Gnomes.
The first two buttons relate to farms. One is for regular
farms and the other is for underground farms. Underground
farms are used for mushrooms, which are a late game food
source. They take a lot of work to set up since you need
to be underground and you need mud patches. Mud patches
require irrigation which requires water. Moving water
requires pumps, which are mechanisms that you won't have
until very late game. Ignore it for now.
The next two buttons are for making groves and planting
trees. Groves do a couple of things. They act as an area
where Gnomes with the Horticulture skill will plant trees
automatically. Depending on the grove's settings, they'll
also harvest any fruit that grows from the trees, cut
clippings, and fell the trees for wood.
The next button makes pastures. Pastures are where you
keep animals. The size of a pasture is determined by its
area and also determines how many animals it can hold. The
Yaks you start with are a size 12, so they need 12 squares
of area per Yak.
The last three buttons are for felling trees, cutting
clippings and for foraging. Felling trees does what it says
on the label. Felling a tree produces a log and also has
a random change to drop a clipping. Cutting clippings
always results in a clipping. Foraging will order your
Gnomes to pick fruit, berries and harvest cotton plants.
--Build--
The build menu is where you can access all the things you
can build. Technically all the menus are important, or else
there wouldn't be so many of them, but this one is fairly
important. You can get by without stockpiles and rooms
and such, but you can't get by without being able to mine,
grow food, and build.
The first button is for building workshops. Workshops form
a sort of crafting/tech tree. The base of this tree is the
Crude Workbench which you can use to craft the most basic
components you'll need to build other, more advanced
workshops.
The second button is for building mechanisms. I'll discuss
mechanisms later in the guide when we talk about advanced
game play and late game stuff.
The third button is for building furniture. This is where
you'll find the option to build beds, among other things.
Some of these are just for making things look pretty or
increasing the worth of your kingdom, but others have
real value, like the bed and the alarm bell.
The last button is for building terrain. If you're working
above ground, you'll use this one a lot. It's very similar
to the terrain menu. You can build walls, floors, stairs
and ramps. I want to point something out here, though. Only
soil and raw stone walls/floors count as terrain. The rest
of the materials count as constructions and can't be mined.
You need to de-construct them like any other object.
--Designate--
This menu allows you to designate areas of the map with
special meaning. There's a bit of overlap with the
agriculture menu because some of the things in the
agriculture menu are actually designations. You can also
make designations bigger by clicking inside an already
designated area and expanding it (you'll know you're doing
it right when your square turns blue).
The first button is very important. It's the stockpile
button. This lets you designate an area as a stockpile.
Once you set what items you want to put in the stockpile,
Gnomes who have the Hauling task set will start bringing
items they find lying around to the stockpile. Well placed
stockpiles can make or break a fortress. The further your
Gnomes need to walk to get materials, the longer it takes
to do things and the more likely it is that those goblins
banging at your gates will break through before you can
build enough weapons to fight them off.
The next button actually opens another sub-menu with all
the agricultural designations (farm, underground farm,
grove and pasture). No need to beat a dead horse.
The next button is also a sub-menu for making rooms. There
are four kinds of rooms, Personal Quarters, Dormitories,
Dining Halls and Hospitals. I touched on Personal Quarters
and Dormitories when I talked about sleep earlier on
(go back and read that if you missed it), so I won't really
cover it here. Dining Halls are areas Gnomes will go to
eat, as long as there's a free table with a chair for them
to eat at. If a Gnome has a table and chair in their room,
they'll go there first. You can designate one Dining Hall
to be your Great Hall and its worth has a lot to do with
diplomacy and enemies. The last one is Hospitals. Injured
Gnomes will go here for healing, provided there's a free
bed for them. Gnomes with the Medic job will heal them
with bandages. If a Gnome loses their arms, they'll also
come here so Gnomes with the Caretaker job can feed them
(since, you know, they have no arms to do it themselves).
The second last button is for making Guard Areas. These
are areas where you can assign squads and they will stand
in the area and attack any enemies who try to pass. Good
for guarding the front door to your underground fortress.
The last button is for Patrol Routes. These are a series
of points, ending on the first point, that you can assign
a squad to. The squad will walk along the route and attack
any enemies they find. This is useful if you have a very
large mine and need to check it for spawned enemies. You
can make a patrol route through the mines and have a squad
run it, looking for enemies.
--Other Buttons--
The last four buttons actually are not menus, but buttons
in and of themselves. I'll explain them in order.
The first button is the clean floor button. This button
allows you to select an area to clean. Any items lying on
the ground will be moved to a stockpile if one is
available. It's sort of a way of giving a higher priority
to picking up certain items. If there's no stockpile for
the item, they'll just be moved off to the first square
that is available. This button obeys the priority of the
Hauling skill.
The next button is the de-construct button. This button
allows you to instruct your builders to take things apart
and return them to their components. Remember how I said
some wall/floor materials weren't actually terrain, but
built items? This is how you remove them.
After that we have the remove designation button. This
button will delete anything you make with the designate
menu, including stockpiles, farms, rooms, etc. Sadly, it
deletes the entire area. You can't select an area to delete
like you can when you want to expand a designation.
The last button is the cancel order button. This button
will cancel all orders in a region. Build orders, dig
orders, you name it.
+------------------------+
| 4.b The Top Bar [MEN3] |
+------------------------+
The top menu bar is less about doing things and more about
giving you information about your kingdom and what's
going on in it. Even so, it has a very important job to
play. It's divided into 5 separate menus, plus a Help menu
which contains a lot of useful information.
--Kingdom--
This menu gives you information about your kingdom in
general. It's divided into tabs, like all the other
screens will be. The first tab is the Overview tab.
The Overview tab gives you a lot of useful information.
Your kingdom name, the seed for your world and your
difficulty. If you're using a pre-set difficulty, you can
change it here at any time. Changing it to a difficulty
other than a pre-set one will lock it to custom, though.
You can also see how many Gnomes you have, workshops,
farms and pastures, as well as the Worth of your kingdom
and its stocks/constructions. I've discussed Worth before
and its effects on enemies and diplomacy, so I won't go
over it here.
The Diplomacy tab shows you all the other kingdoms you've
discovered and gives you information about them. This
includes the time (in-game) it will take for a trader to
travel to/from that kingdom and who your ambassador to that
kingdom is, if you have one.
Ambassadors are tricky Gnomes. They require their own
private room (so it needs a floor, walls and a door) of a
certain minimum worth. They'll also eat and drink from
your kingdom's supplies. If their needs aren't met, they'll
leave. They do let you send traders to their kingdom
whenever you want, but we'll talk about that later.
The Workshops tab lets you see all your workshops and what
they're doing. The same goes for the Farms and Pastures
tabs. The last tab (labelled Rooms) lists every room in
your kingdom. Rooms are designated in the Designate->Rooms
menu.
--Stocks--
Stocks shows you an overview of what you have in your
kingdom, from food to metals. The first tab shows you
an overview of how much food and drink you have, plus
weapons, armour, furniture and storage containers.
The Stockpiles tab shows you all the stockpiles in your
kingdom, just like the Rooms tab in the Kingdom menu.
Items lets you see how many items of different kinds you
have in stock. You can select different types from the menu
and the windows to the right will show you the number of
each type you have.
The last menu is handy. You can set up tracking categories.
The count of food and drink in the upper left corner are
tracked items. You can remove them and add your own and
they'll show up in that corner.
--Population--
This menu is crucial for more advanced players and for when
you start to get into late game. This menu contains the
professions area, which allows you to customize the
different professions you can assign to your Gnomes.
Just like the other menus, the Overview tells you some
general information about what's going on in your kingdom
as well as how many Gnomes you have assigned to the
different job types.
The Assign tab is where things start getting interesting.
Here you can change what professions your Gnomes are
assigned to. Professions control what jobs your Gnomes will
do and in what order.
The Professions tab is a big one and where I'll be spending
the next little while explaining things. Understanding this
menu will make your life a lot easier.
At the top is a box and two buttons where you can select
an existing profession to edit, remove an existing
profession or create a new one. Selecting the box lets
you change the name of the selected profession.
The large box below that box is where you can select which
jobs a profession will handle. These jobs are called skills
and correspond to the skills of your Gnomes. It's a bad
idea to assign a Gnome with a Cooking skill of 5 to cook
things. He'll be slow and make very poor quality items.
Gnomes will improve over time, though, so don't worry too
much. The game will also start you off with Gnomes with
the skills you need to get started.
I'd like to take a moment to cover a few of the skills in
here. Most of them are obvious, but a few aren't. I'll go
over the ones that aren't obvious.
Stone->Stonecarving: This skill is for Gnomes who are going
to work at Stonecarving workshops making trinkets for sale
to merchants or other decorative items.
Wood->Woodcarving: Same as Stonecarving, but with wood.
Metal->Metalworking: Same as Stonecarving, but with metal.
Misc Craft->Pottery: Same as Stonecarving, but with clay.
Also produces Bricks which are used as a wall/floor
material.
Misc Craft->Bonecarving: Same as Stonecarving, but with
bone. This one is actually important, though, because
bone carvers produce bone needles, which you need to make
a tailor workshop. Tailor workshops produce bags (storage)
and mattresses (needed for beds).
Misc Craft->Prospecting: This is a cool skill, but it's
based heavily on chance. Gnomes with this skill can work
at Prospector workshops, turning 10 lumps of soil or rock
into a metal sliver. 10 metal slivers makes a metal bar,
but which sliver you get is random, so it can take a long
time to get enough to make a bar.
Engineer->Tinker: Gnomes with this skill enabled will go
to a Tinker Bench and research new mechanisms.
Engineer->Mechanic: Gnomes with this skill will operate
mechanisms and reset sprung traps. They'll also ring
alarm bells.
Agriculture->Horticulture: This one is a tricky one. It
covers several jobs. They include planting trees and
cutting clippings. It does not include handling Forage
orders. Those are actually under Agriculture->Farming.
Doctor->Caretaker: These Gnomes don't actually heal anyone
but instead tend to the needs of Gnomes who can't tend to
themselves. Like that poor Gnome who lost both his arms in
combat.
You can also pick a uniform for anyone assigned to the
profession to wear. I'll talk about uniforms later when we
talk about military, but it's basically a collection of
clothing and things your Gnomes carry in their hands.
Finally, there's the Job Type Priority box. This box is a
source of confusion for new and old players alike. In
truth, it's not very hard. The Agriculture priority is what
messes everyone up.
Most of the priorities are fairly simple and it's clear
what they control. Agriculture controls a number of jobs
that you'd think belong to Farm or Grove. For example,
Agriculture controls cutting clippings, but only for trees
that aren't in a grove. It also controls cooking and
brewing for some reason, even though those would logical be
controlled by the Workshop priority since the Kitchen and
Distillery are workshops.
Try to avoid putting the Agriculture priority too high on
the list. If it is, when you give an order to chop some
trees or Forage you'll notice your farms and groves
suddenly stop being tended to. Careful priority
organization is important to having a smooth running
fortress.
The last tab is for deceased Gnomes and tells you why they
died. It's not very useful right now since chances are you
know why your Gnome died, or else they died in their sleep
of hunger/thirst. Yes, that does happen sometimes. A Gnome
will take a nap and die during it because their game logic
doesn't let them wake up to feed themselves.
--Military--
This is another big section. The Military menu is all about
managing your Gnomes so they can defend themselves from the
many creatures looking to kill them.
There are two kinds of enemies, Invaders and Spawners. I
mentioned that earlier. Invaders appear at the edges of the
map. Spawners appear at depth -7 and below and only on dark
squares. Some of them can be very nasty, like Beetles who
can multiply indefinitely.
So the question becomes, how do you defend your Gnomes from
such terrifying creatures? That's where the Military comes
in. The Overview tab gives you a general overview of your
squads, what they're doing and what enemies on are on the
map.
The Enemies tab goes into greater detail on the enemies
currently wandering your kingdom. There's a section on
enemies later in the guide, so check that if you want to
know about the many terrors you'll be facing above and
below ground.
Squads is where the real meat and bones of the Military
system starts. Here you can create new squads, edit
exiting ones and disband squads you no longer need.
Squads are formed of 5 members, a leader and 4 squad-mates.
You can also choose a formation for a squad, which
determines what kind of position each position in the squad
are.
Formations is where you can create, edit and delete
formations. Formations define what the different positions
in the squads are and a perk for using that formation.
Perks include things like giving the entire squad more
range for having more members, or more defence for each
member with a shield. There's also a few other options
such as whether or not a squad will carry out your
attack orders or whether they'll attack enemies spotted
by other Gnomes.
Positions is where you can define the types of squad
positions. Squad positions is a combination of the uniform
that position wears and a perk. Perks include things like
getting a random change to not consume ammo when shooting
or giving bonus damage when using 2-handed weapons. Like
Formations, there's some extra options here such as chasing
after enemies when the Gnome loses sight of them or trying
to keep their distance (good for archers or ranged
attackers).
Uniforms are used both by positions and professions. Here
you can define outfits, which are comprised of armour and
items held in hand. Hand items include weapons, torches and
tools like pickaxes. There's also a "None" uniform that
is permanent in the game so that you can have your Gnomes
return their armour to a stockpile when their not using it.
The Uniform section is defined into three columns of boxes,
one row for each body part. The columns define, in order:
- The type of item to equip
- The desired material of the item to equip
- The desired rarity of the item to equip
With these menus, you have everything you need to create
a military that can defend your Gnomes from attackers.
--Events--
This menu just brings up a list of messages that you've
gotten recently. It includes things like a Yak being born
or someone falling asleep on the ground. You can click the
button next to the message to go to the location where it
came from. These messages also appear in the lower left
corner for a short time.
You can also view combat logs from fights. This is good
if you want to see how effective your troops are being
against enemies. Enemies are weak to different types of
damage and different weapons do different kinds of damage.
Anyone who has played Dungeons & Dragons or another
table-top game will understand this concept very well.
+----------------------+
| 5. The Basics [BAS1] |
+----------------------+
Now that we've gotten all the technical stuff out of the
way, we can actually play! These next few sections will
guide you through setting up the groundwork for a new
fortress. The goal is to teach you what you need to do to
build a fortress that can sustain itself on its own while
you plan out the fortress of your dreams. Once that's done,
we'll talk about some advanced concepts that will explain
the more late game stuff. Feel free to skip those sections
and try to learn them for yourself. That's half the fun,
after all!
+-----------------------------+
| 5.a Before Unpausing [BAS2] |
+-----------------------------+
Your game will start paused. This gives you a chance to do
a few things before you start time running. The game will
also pause whenever it saves automatically, unless you
disable this in the game settings.
There's a few things you should do first in the game before
unpausing for the first time. First, you should lay out
two farms. You start with 32 wheat and 32 strawberry seeds,
enough for a 6x6 farm of each. You'll want to get them
set up as fast as possible since they take a while to grow
based on how much sunlight they receive. Try not to give
any other farming orders (foraging) while your farmers set
up your farms as they'll handle those first and leave your
farms alone.
The next thing you'll need is to order some trees to be
felled. I'd strongly recommend taking clippings from them
first and then taking those clippings to make a grove.
Be aware, different wood types have different values. Birch
is the most valuable, so if you want value, go for that.
If you're playing with enemies on, I'd suggest pine as it
will keep your kingdom worth down while you set up.
While you're at it, you may want to take some clippings
from nearby apple and orange trees to make some groves of
them. They'll provide fruit to augment your strawberry
farm. Either way, you will need to do some foraging to
hold your Gnomes over until your farms and groves start
producing, but try to leave that to last.
Two more things you should do. One is set up some
stockpiles. I generally suggest one for food/drink and
another for seeds/clippings placed near your farms/groves
for easy access. The other thing is to start digging! You
want to get down to depth -7 (if you're on a flat map) or
shallower if you're digging into a mountain/hill. You'll
need stone to produce a Crude Workbench.
Keep in mind, if you've got Skeletons turned on, they'll
start spawning at depth -7 and below. There's not much
known about their spawn mechanics, so be careful. The
current assumption is that the work like Golems, spawning
only if a square has been unlit for 48 hours.
Once you're happy with your set up, you can unpause the
game, either with the buttons below the top menu bar or
with the spacebar. If you haven't unpaused yet, the game
will probably autosave for you. It does that every 3 days,
but there's a setting in the options to change it. I'd
suggest leaving it turned on for now.
Your Gnomes will hop to work doing your orders. Keep an
eye on them as they work. Once your farms are all tilled
and planted, you can order you farmers to do other work
like foraging some extra food to hold your kingdom over
until your farms and groves start producing. Be sure to
abuse the pause button so you can lay your orders out
without your Gnomes running to do them.
Once you have some stone and some wood, pause again. It's
time to start crafting!
+--------------------------------+
| 5.b The Crude Workbench [BAS3] |
+--------------------------------+
So, now you have wood and stone. It's time to start
crafting. Open the Build menu and select Workshops. At the
top of the list should be a Crude Workbench. That's what
we want. First, though, notice how on the right side of
the menu it tells you what materials you need to build
the Crude Workbench. You can also select the specific kind
of materials to use if you have more than one.
All the crafting menus have this feature. They'll show you
what you need and let you pick the type of material to use.
There's a rule to this, though. You have to have seen the
component that you want to use at least once. So if you
want to use a birch workbench to build a workshop, you
need to have had a birch workbench in stock at least once.
Go ahead and build a Crude Workbench wherever you want.
If you right click on it, you'll open the crafting menu for
that workshop. Let's take a moment to go over it.
Head to the Overview tab first. This tab gives you some
basic information about the workshop. Here, you can assign
a Gnome to it, change its priority and adjust some
settings. Assigning means only that Gnome can work at that
workshop. That Gnome can still work at other workshops that
aren't assigned, so it's not very useful unless you have
a workshop for everyone. Otherwise, chances are your
assigned Gnome will use whatever workshop is closest and it
won't be their assigned one, so they'll be the only one
able to work.
The priority controls which workshops are handled first.
The higher the number, the sooner that workshop's jobs are
handled. This only applies between workshops. The order
in which workshops are handled compared to other jobs is
controlled by the Workshops priority in the Professions
menu.
The last two settings are Suspend and Accept Generated
Jobs. Suspend does what it says. Nobody will use that
workshop. The suspend setting is also on farms, pastures,
groves and a lot of other things. It's a good way to make
sure you don't overload your Gnomes with work. Finally, the
last setting controls whether or not this workshop accepts
jobs that are created automatically. Normally, when you
order a job at a workshop or a build order, if there isn't
enough components to complete it, your Gnomes will try to
create the components they need. Setting this check box will
prevent the workshop from accepting those automatically
created jobs. That probably seems useless to you, but it's
actually quite useful.
Say you've queued up some build orders for crates and one
for a workshop. This will generate crafting orders for the
crates and workbenches for workshops. In automatic mode,
the moment there's enough planks for the crates, they'll
get made, even if the workbenches are more important to you.
What you can do is turn off the automatic mode, set your
build orders and then order up the workbenches and crates
manually. This way you can control the order they're done
in.
Now let's look at the crafting tab. On the left you can see
a list of all the items you can create in the current
workshop. Below that is a readout of what components you
need to make the currently selected item. In the middle is
a list of jobs currently queued at the workshop. On the
right are your options for repeating jobs. Repeating works
a bit strangely, but it makes sense once it's explained.
If you queue up a job, you can select it and press the
Repeat check box. That job will be repeated, forever, as long
as there's materials available. Below that is Repeat To,
which will repeat the job until there's enough items
produced to match the number. This is good for food and
drink if you want to maintain a certain amount in stock but
not make too much.
Concrete example. Mants (a kind of enemy) attack in larger
forces when you have more than 2,000 combined food and
drink. That's a good reason to keep it low.
I'd just like to point something out at the materials area.
I've mentioned it before, but you can set the type of
material you want to use. For example, you can make a chair
out of any kind of wood, but you can also specifically make
a birch chair. This is actually a good thing to do. If you
select any material, your Gnomes will randomly start
crafting components until they have enough to make whatever
they're making. Kind of a waste of time and materials.
+-----------------------+
| 5.c Workshops! [BAS4] |
+-----------------------+
The Crude Workbench is the starting point of the crafting
system. To move on, you'll need wood, stone and more
crafting workshops.
Get your Crude Workbench started on making a workbench,
chair and chisel. It's probably best to make three of each.
Let your Gnomes take over and make them. If you're really
fast and have been abusing the pause button, it's probably
getting around morning of the second day. Don't worry if
it's later than that. I've had a lot of practice with these
kinds of games.
You'll notice that some of your Gnomes have, or soon will
be, falling asleep on the floor. If they're not yet, your
ahead of the game. It's a good idea to lay out a Dormitory,
probably 5x5, and put some straw beds in it. Don't put more
than six beds because they use straw and you need that to
feed your Yaks until your Wheat farm starts producing.
The moment your beds are built, a few Gnomes will probably
dash for them to sleep. Now you get to wait. All your Gnomes
will fall asleep roughly around the same time, so everything
is going to grind to a half as a result.
Once you have at least one workbench, chair and chisel, you
can build a Stonecutter workshop. Go ahead and do that.
When your next workbench, chair and chisel are done, build
a Stonemason workshop. With these two workshops, you can
build a few other things that will help you along the way.
The first item is a well. Wells must be built over water,
but they provide a (theoretically) limitless supply of drink
for your Gnomes. That will come in handy during your first
winter when you need to conserve fruit for food.
The other item is you can now craft a saw blade at the
Stonemason workshop. Make one now, plus another workbench
and chair. Once you've got those, you can make a Sawmill and,
lastly, a Carpenter workshop (when the last workbench, chair
and chisel combination are done). These four workshops
together make your Crude Workbench obsolete. They do the
same thing, and more, and they do it faster.
You now have everything you need to make a Distillery. A
Distillery takes various food items and turns them into
drinks for you Gnomes. You'll need a table and two barrels
to make it. I'm going to trust that you can do that on your
own by now.
Once your Distillery is built, congratulations! You should
now have a self-sustaining Gnome kingdom. From here on out,
what you do is up to you. You should have everything you
need to build whatever you want.
This is also where this guide ends for now. In the future,
I will expand it to include more information about late
game stuff such as mechanisms. Best of luck to you and your
Gnomes and don't be too disheartened if your first few
fortresses fail. After a few times, and with the information
you've learned here, you'll get the hang of it.
+-----------------------------+
| 6. Advanced Gameplay [ADV1] |
+-----------------------------+
Now that you have a self-sustaining kingdom, we can dig into
some of the more advanced features of Gnomoria. These are
things like Diplomacy (and trading), Metalworking and
Engineering. The next sections will be less of a 'hold your
hand and walk you through it' format and more of an
information dump to tell you what you need to know to make
use of the advanced features.
+----------------------+
| 6.a Diplomacy [ADV2] |
+----------------------+
Diplomacy is a recent addition to the game and extends the
old Merchant feature where, on the fifth day of a season
(except winter) a merchant would arrive that you could trade
with. If you had a Market Stall set up, he'd take over it
and right clicking would open a trading menu. Now there's a
lot more to it than just that.
You can still build a Market Stall and merchants will still
appear on the fifth day of a season, but now it's random
whether or not they appear. They'll eat food and consume
drink from your kingdom's stocks too.
Merchants will trade just about anything and the worth of
your kingdom determines what items they have in stock.
Merchants are currently the only way of getting your hands on
Alpacas, Emus, Grapes and Mushrooms. Merchants can also
provide other things if you've run out of them, so just
because you chopped down all the trees and have no clippings
to plant new ones doesn't mean you're out of luck.
The randomness of merchants makes them reliable, though. If
you want a reliable trading partner, you need to become
friends with another kingdom. As your kingdom worth rises,
other kingdoms (controlled by the AI) will contact you. You
can host an ambassador from them to become friends with them.
The exception to this is the goblin kingdom, which is always
hostile.
Ambassadors have some requirements. They need their own,
private room. That means it must be walled, have a floor and
have a door. The room must also be of a certain minimum worth
determined by which kingdom the ambassador is coming from.
Meet those requirements and the ambassador will settle down
in your kingdom. He/she will consume food and drink and sleep
but won't help with any jobs. This is because they're
technically not a part of your kingdom.
Once you're hosting an ambassador, you can go to the Kingdom
menu and open the Diplomacy tab. There you'll be able to
select the kingdom you're hosting the ambassador for and
make a trade.
To trade, select the goods you want to purchase and the goods
you want to sell. The value of the goods you're selling must
at least equal that of the goods you want to buy. You'll also
need to select a Gnome to make the trip. Do all that and your
selected Gnome will leave on their tip. When they return,
they'll bring with them what you purchased.
That's all there is to Diplomacy right now. In the future, it
may be possible for kingdoms other than the goblin kingdom
to become hostile to you. In fact, this system may also form
the basis on multi-player! How do I know this? Well, in the
game's save data is a flag that indicates whether or not a
save game is single player. If it's not single player, it
must be multi-player. For now, it's permanently set to true,
but who knows that the future holds.
+-------------------------+
| 6.b Metalworking [ADV3] |
+-------------------------+
With all those workshops for wood and stone, there must be
more. There is, it's called metalworking. It's similar to
the stone and wood crafting system, but there's more to it
than that.
To start working with metal, you'll need ore and coal. Both
can be found underground. Coal can also be created in the
Furnace workshop using wood logs. This is a good way to get
torches early in the game to light up your mines.
Next, you'll need a Forge workshop. The Forge workshop turns
ore and coal into metal bars, which are the basis of
metalworking in the same way as planks are for wood.
From here, there's a number of different workshops that you
can create. The first one, and the one you will absolutely
need to unlock the others, is the Blacksmith workshop. Here
you can create the components you'll need to make the other
workshops.
With a Blacksmith, you now have access to the Weaponsmith
workshop, Armourer workshop, Jeweler workshop and the
Machine Shop workshop. The first two are fairly obvious. They
let you produce metal weapons and armour. If you're playing
with monsters, you'll need these sooner or later. The Jeweler
workshop lets you produce jewellery from gems. These are
valuable trade items but they serve no other real purpose
yet.
The last one, the Machine Shop workshop, is a fun one and
it's the focus of the next section.
+------------------------+
| 6.c Engineering [ADV4] |
+------------------------+
With the Machine Shop workshop, you can craft a Wrench which
can be used to make both an Engineer Shop workshop and a
Tinker's Bench. Tinker's Bench allows Gnomes to perform
research and invent new and useful things. These things
include mechanisms, power sources and even guns!
The focus of this section is solely on mechanisms. There's
a limited number in the game right now, but you can do some
interesting things with what's there.
The base of the mechanism system is the axle. Axles transfer
power to any axle that is facing the same direction as it is.
To redirect the direction of an axle, you need a gearbox.
A gearbox will take power in from one direction and send it
out in all other directions, including up and down.
Axles and gearboxes require a certain amount of power to move
them. Axles require 1 per axle in the system, gearboxes are
3. If an axle is rotating, then there is enough power for
the system. If there isn't, it won't be.
To control when your system is powered and when it isn't,
there are two kinds of switches. The first is a lever. A
Gnome with the Mechanic skill will operate a lever when you
click on it. They act as an axle when engaged and nothing
when disengaged. The other is a pressure plate, which does
the same thing as a switch, but it responds to something
stepping on it instead. You can change how a pressure plate
senses what's going on so that it will either transmit power
when stepped on, or when not stepped on.
There are three ways to produce power right now. A hand crank
is the most basic and requires a Gnome with the Mechanic
skill to operate. It produces 10 power while working. The
next is a windmill. They must be placed 'outside' and
provide 20 power. When I say outside, I mean that they must
have a clear view of the sky, so you can put them underground
and mine the ceiling above them and they'll still work.
The last power source is a steam engine and it provides
a whopping 200 power while fuelled. Steam engines consume
wood and coal as fuel.
Devices are things that require power to operate and do
various functions. A hatch acts like a hole when unpowered</pre><pre id="faqspan-2">
and a floor when powered. It uses 10 power. You can do some
interesting things with this device such as making pitfall
traps. A mechanical wall uses 20 power and acts as a floor
when unpowered and a wall when powered. Additionally, when
you power a mechanical wall, if there's already a floor above
it, it will crush anything living on top of it when it rises,
killing it instantly. Again, lots of opportunities here.
Mechanical walls can also be used to control the flow of
water or even pump it if you know what you're doing. If you
really want to move water, though, you should use a pump.
They require 20 power to operate and there's some special
rules to them.
Pumps will move any water that is below them upwards to the
square above them. They will keep working until they run out
of water or power, whichever comes first. The most up to date
information on water is from Gnomoria 0.8.34, so that's what
I'm using. Water will evaporate if there's not enough of it
in a square. That's why rain doesn't flood the map. With the
way this game feature is set up, a single pump can fill a
2x2 room, or smaller, without any trouble. For anything
larger, you need multiple pumps.
There's also something to mention about pumping water into
confined spaces. Once a space is filled, the water will begin
pressurizing. The percentage indicator shows how much water
is in a square versus how much volume it has. So a square
with 200% water holds twice as much water is it should, so
the water is under twice as much pressure. This is a good
thing since, under pressure, water will flow further before
evaporating. If you want to make an aqueduct, you'll need a
staging area to pressurize the water before you send it off.
You should definitely have a switch to turn pumps off to
avoid flooding and other bad things, and also to keep the
pressure below 1000%. At 1000% and above, the game tends to
crash when you release the water.
The last thing to cover about mechanisms and engineering is
the fact that you can build automatic traps. These traps will
trigger when an enemy steps on them. Once sprung, a trap will
need to be reset by a Gnome with the Mechanic skill before
it can operate again. Trap strength is determined by the
metal it's made of.
+-------------------+
| 7. Enemies [ENM1] |
+-------------------+
There are two kinds of enemies, Invaders and Spawners.
Spawners spawn on the edge of the map. These include Wild
Animals, Goblins, Ogres and Mants. Each has a few
interesting traits you'll want to know.
Wild Animals are actually peaceful unless you attack them.
In time, they'll leave on their own. They're a good source
of meat, hide and bone if you need it, though.
Goblins and Ogres attack together, so I'll cover them at
the same time. Goblins and Ogres will attack your kingdom
starting in the Summer of your first year. The size,
composition and equipment of squads will get tougher as
your kingdom's worth increases. Goblins attack in what
are called 'raiding parties'. They're accompanied by Goblin
Raiders who will attempt to steal items from your kingdom.
If the Raiders die, the attacking Goblins will try to
leave.
!WARNING!
In Gnomoria 0.9.8, Goblins will not leave when the Raiders
die if they are already in combat. They will not try to
disengage.
!WARNING!
If the Raiders can't find a way into your base, they'll
leave and bring a Goblin Tunneler with them next time they
arrive. This Tunneler, if left alone for long enough, will
dig a tunnel into your base, allowing the Goblins to
attack.
Mants also have a unique way of attacking. They'll send a
scout. If the scout is not killed and returns to his home,
he'll bring an invasion force with him when he comes back.
This invasion force grows as your kingdom worth increases,
and also gets larger if you have too much food/drink
(more than 2,000 combined). Mants also have a poisonous
sting, so they should really only be dealt with by armoured
soldiers.
Spawning enemies appear at depth -7 and below. The deeper
down you go, the harder enemies get. These enemies will
only spawn in the dark or at the exposed edge of a map
regardless of lighting. These enemies include Skeletons,
Golems (of which there are many kinds), Zombies, Beetles
and Spiders.
Skeletons spawn underground and the deeper they spawn, the
better equipped they are. Sadly, information is kind of
lacking for them, but I'll update this section as more
becomes available.
Golems are the real enemy you want to worry about
underground. They'll spawn on any square that has not been
lit for at least 48 hours at depth -8 and below, that has
a Gnome no further away than 16 squares away and no less
than 6, within 1-2 floors down. They will only spawn if
they can find a path to a Gnome. Golems ignore kingdom
worth, they only use depth and the surrounding stone type
to decide what kind of Golem spawns.
Zombies spawn at depth -8 and below and the deeper you go,
the more of them that spawn. If a Zombie bites a Gnome,
they will infect them with Zombism. Any Gnome who is
infect and dies will rise from the dead as a Zombie wearing
whatever the Gnome was wearing when he rose. It's a good
idea to unequip Gnomes who have been infected and died.
Beetles spawn at depth -10 and below. These guys are nasty.
They'll create a cocoon every four days which will mature
into more Beetles. This process can repeat indefinitely,
meaning that Beetles can very quickly outnumber your Gnomes
by a large margin. They're tough and powerful, making them
one of the most dangerous enemies in the game (since they
can be encountered so early on).
Spiders are the most dangerous enemy in the game by far.
Think Shelob from Lord of the Rings. Thankfully they only
spawn at depth -78 and below, so they're rare. Spiders
follow similar rules to Golems in that they'll only spawn
near a Gnome (6-16 squares away, 1-2 floors down. Kingdom
worth is ignored for spawning spiders.
+-----------------+
| 8. Legal [LEG1] |
+-----------------+
This guide, and its contents, are copyright 2014 M. Damian
Mulligan (aka G'lek Tarssza). Gnomoria is copyright 2012
Robotronic Games. All other copyrights and trademarks
contained in this document are owned by their respective
trademark and copyright holders.
This guide is provided 'as-is', without any express or
implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held
liable for any damages arising from the use or misuse of
this guide.
This guide may be not be reproduced under any circumstances
except for personal, private use. It may not be placed on
any web site or otherwise distributed publicly without
advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other
web site or as a part of any public display is strictly
prohibited, and a violation of copyright.
The following sites have permission to host this guide:
- GameFAQs
- Neoseeker
- Steam Community
If you find this guide on any other site, please let me know.
If you have questions, comments, concerns or complaints, you
can contact me by email at robloxianmany AT gmail DOT com.
I will NOT answer questions which are answered in this
guide beyond telling you to read the guide. I will not
tolerate spam messages and spammers will be blocked without
warning or a chance for appeal. Flames will be used to roast
marshmallows (and then be blocked).
Thanks for reading.
