Bellwright's Shortcut to Advancement: Do This Now! - Early Game 

One piece of advice at 180 hours I wish I'd known earlier- don't bother with farm food (potatoes onions, radish, turnip) until late T2/early T3 when you unlock the Tavern, first time I found a use for it... don't bother feeding villagers raw beets and onions etc., it doesn't last long and barely any buff to it, if you are trying to save on meats, give them dried berries and dried mushrooms from the T2 forager racks, they stay fresh forever in a stockpile too. Save your early farm for hemp/flax as priority 1, sage garlic somewhere after that, and keep a camp setup somewhere for river reeds. You always will need flax hemp, and reeds.

So, I am about 225 days in and almost completed building all my T3 buildings and about to liberate my third town. Some things I have learned so far are its easy to attempt to liberate your first town when you aren't ready. I made that mistake, but just saved to a previous game and kept grinding until I thought I was ready. By the time I thought I was ready to take it I was actually OP. I ended up easily liberating the town and defeating the reclamation party. It was hard to know exactly when you're ready, but once you get the town then you can trade for bronze which is highly needed when building up in T2. Travel signs are highly valuable especially when you want to collect Pete, Moss and Iron Ore and easily get to other towns when doing their quests. I would avoid building other settlements until you get to T3 or close to T3 because, if you do it right you can get everything you need near Hearndean and the other stuff you can collect yourself via travel signs. Also, keep in mind that you can set your war parties to pick up certain amounts of food before you head out, but they will pick up that amount plus what they already had on them, so in some cases you may end up having them take too much food and not have enough room for storage of the things you loot when you defeat the bandits and brigands. Also, I make fine stew because it gives my NPC's a combat buff, so make lots of that when going to war. Lastly, keep in mind that most T3 buildings are set so the front of the building is facing away from you, so you have to turn them 180 degrees before laying them down. I made that mistake with two buildings before I realized it and once you lay it and start putting materials in it you can't get them back if you disassemble it before completing the build, which sucks. God speed and grind away.

Great advice!

Dankie dude! Great tips!

outpost is very important i lost so many time to use sign post to collect iron and other stuff by myself, also position of outpost will be critical for defending villages from reclamation parties.

My first settlement I built to the left of the fishermen hut on the road got access to him and the small hut merchant and a Small copper settlement up by the copper at one of the starting wolf Den missions all 10of my settlers currently have Adventure gear on and sturdy Gloves currently working on building the Village Hall

As for skill exp boost, use 1 cloudberry, 1 fish stew, 1 cranberry. This provides 100% increase (double experience). Save the food until there is under 5 minutes on the book you are reading. Your skills shoot up fast. As to starting position, there is no 'best spot'. I start at the base of Haerndean because I have to visit it so much at first. I have raid set to high, so my first raid is on day 5, and I need 3 companions with plank shields ready. I don't have time running long distance back and forth from Haerndean. By day 5, I can make meat stew and fine stew, I can take out the 3 closest camps, deal with the first raid, clear the bandits for the cart quest, and possibly clear the bandit camp south of the lake (though I usually wait to have 4 companions for that one). All of this drops about 15-20 straps ... enough to start all the main research items.

Wolf Fangs are better used for trophys. The best way to imporve relationship is building shrines for 15 stone. Its enough to use 10 stones for every shrine, the rest will be spend by the village.

I agree with your start location, except I suggest your VERY FIRST start to be south, right out of city limits. This area should have a foragers hut to unlock the weavers loom and a single storage hut next to that travel post. Once you have Padlow, unlocked, MOVE the base to where your FIRST LOCATION is... meaning build villager tents and logging camps/etc. there. This allows you to clear cut ALL the nearby trees in that first area and run back to the first city quickly.

FYI the skill-up from the food, actually effect the books too.

Use books but later is eay to make books even better! You need a good and stable food (I use fine stew) and if you replenish it (fine stew will be fist allways) so in second spot you can have cranbery + 50 skill bonus nd in 3 spod blueberry cake or other stuf that have this bonus

Getting to the stage of being able to make fish stew is still a grind. I enjoy some grinding but as a habitual restarter, I often get anxious to get through that early set up grind. In this case, mods are an invaluable tool. The nice thing with mods (so far) as that you can pull them in and out as you want. Bellwright is very easy to mod and options range from minimal to insane. Check out Nexus mods for Bellwright mods, you may find something that helps you get over the hump or ease some of the pain inherent with production sim games like this.

In terms of creating a bag for yourself, I think they have another type of bag named 'small backpack' which gives you more room!

Just wall off the bridge with a simple fence and the bandit will have to figure out pathing - They will take forever to reach your base giving plenty of time to defend and react. Another tip, when you have your companions activated, you can hit the E key onto stockpiles, barns, warehouse, and they will feed themselves or arm arrows if you have the items stored within. This feature will let you quickly mobilize all your fighters and get them ready for war. In regards to books, as long as you have it in your inventory, you can level the villagers from anywhere in the map. Don't bother taking those books back to base while you're out fighting bandits unless you're saving them. And if you really want to break the game, make a fenced off box then climb inside, stand on top of a cheap storage box to become a human turret, you can now pretty much solo a bandit camp with start bows and cheap arrows ;) The AI can't break buildings down right now as buildings don't have health.

Dont forget that liberated villages can be traded with with for cheap/infinite log, wood, thatch, and strap.

Looks like an interesting game! Does it have armour or not yet? What abut the fighting is it good?

Travel Signs cost 150 renown, too.. so make one or two early game. Make them right beside a storage hut and your research bench.

I just wish the buidling wasn't quite so hard. Lik,e making the town hall, you HAVE to add each board one at a time. Why can't they add wall parts in sections, instead of single board?

I make spicey meat pies it gives 50 percent it's better then the fish stew

SEED POUCH OP for villagers

SOUTH AFRICA IN THE HOUSE!!!!!