Against The Storm: Complete Beginner’s Guide

Against the Storm is a very unique game, which can make it tough for a beginner to dive into.

The game combines city management and roguelite progression, creating a game quite unlike the majority of city management simulators.

In this guide, we’ll go over some key tips to help break the ice in this challenging game!

Complete Beginner’s Guide

How To Have An Easier Start

You’ll get to choose where to start each time you begin a new run. This lets you pick from a variety of biomes close to the Smoldering City, which is your capital.

Early on, you should stick to the Royal Woodlands biome, as it’s relatively safe compared to the others.

Once you choose your starting area, you’ll get to pick which settles to embark with. The absolute best for beginners are the Beavers, though, as they produce large amounts of Wood. Extremely useful, as Wood is always extremely important in Against the Storm!

Lastly, make sure to pick either Settler or Pioneer as your starting difficulty. Veteran and Viceroy difficulties might seem tempting, but we recommend saving them for later!

Win & Loss Conditions

Winning and losing in Against the Storm is relatively simple. Let’s take a look at the two bars at the bottom of the screen, shall we?

The blue bar on the left side is your Reputation. It increases as you complete Orders and keep your villages happy. Basically, just make sure that your colony is thriving and you’ll gain Reputation!

Completely filling up the Reputation bar will end the game in a victory!

Now, the red bar on the right side is the Queen’s Impatience. This bar naturally fills over time, and you will instantly lose the moment it’s completely filled.

Thankfully, gaining Reputation will reduce the Impatience and give you more time to win!

The trick? There’s also a Hostility mechanic, which increases with the more Reputation you have and lowers when the Impatience bar increases.

Higher Hostility levels will cause a variety of nasty negative Forest Mysteries to trigger, so you will need to carefully manage it if you want to have a chance at maxing out your Reputation.

Building Hearths or Monasteries, increasing the Queen’s Impatience, and killing villagers are some of the potential ways to lower Hostility.

In short, though, you’ll need to race against the Queen’s Impatience while building up your Reputation and dealing with the negative effects of Hostility.

Don’t Overexert Your Villagers

A common error beginner players make in Against the Storm is to make too many buildings. This will, in turn, cause all of your villagers to stay in these buildings to work.

While that’s all fine and dandy on paper, creating too many buildings will spread your population thin. You’ll find that you don’t have enough gatherers and builders left anymore, causing a bottleneck in your resource pipelines.

Considering that you’re racing against time to win, you absolutely do not want to hit any snags when it comes to productivity!

Basically, don’t build more buildings than you can actually maintain.

Decorations Aren’t Just For Looks

While the name “Decorations” implies that they’re purely for visuals, Decorations are actually an important gameplay mechanic.

You can get Decorations in three different categories: Comfort, Aesthetics, and Harmony.

All of these categories need to have their requirements met for you to be able to upgrade your Hearths’ Hubs. And the only way to meet the requirements is by getting and placing Decorations!

Focus On Deeds Early On

The game has an achievement system known as “Deeds”, which will give you many rewards for reaching various goals.

Some of the rewards will unlock new buildings, while others will give you Experience to unlock permanent upgrades.

You’re very unlikely to beat a run without first focusing on getting rewards and unlocks via the Deeds system, so make it your primary focus at first.

Losing Doesn’t Really Equal Failure

Against the Storm is, above everything else, a roguelite. You’re expected to lose frequently, but every loss will make the game easier for you.

You’ll unlock a variety of upgrades and obtain rewards thanks to the aforementioned Deeds system, and you can even buy some permanent upgrades at the Smoldering City.

The game will get progressively easier as you earn unlocks, and you’ll get better as you learn the intricacies of the game as well.

So, yeah, this is a quick and small tip. Nonetheless, we want to remind you to not let losses ruin your mood since you’re always making progress towards an eventual win!

ALSO READ: Complete Beginner’s Guide in Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising